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TEXT* BO OK FOR COLLEGES AND S CHOOLS. 

Appleton 6f Coi have recently published the third edition 
:' ■ <^ GENERAL 

H I STO RY OF CIVILIZATION 

IN EUROPE, 

From the Fall oi the Roman Empii'e to the French Revolution. 
.By M. GUIZOT, 

Late Professor of History, now Prime Minister of France. 
With occasional Notes by C. S. Henry, D.D., Professor of Philosophy and 

History in the University of the City of New- York. One volume 

12mo. Price $1 00. 

" We hail with 'pleasure the republication of this able work. It is terse and full, and 
adverts to the most interesting topic in the social relations of mankind, the progressive 
improvement of the European nations from the overthrow of the Roman Empire by the 
Goths, and Huns, and Vandals, in the Fifth Century; 

" The work of M. Guizot comprehends a Course of Lectures which he delivered, and 
which contain the spirit of Modem History, all condensed into a focus, to illuminate one 
most impressive feature in the annals of the world. A concise view of the chief themes 
will accurately unfold the importance of this volume. 

" The introductory lecture is devoted to a discussion of the general subject in its prin- 
ciples ; which is followed by the application of them to the condition of European society. 

" M. Guizot next proceeds to develop the deranged state of the kingdoms of Europe, 
after the subversion of the Roman power, and the subdivision of the ancient empire into 
distinct sovereignties ; which is followed by a survey of the feudal system. The various 
changes and civil revolutions of the people with the crusades, the conflicts between the 
nierarcliical supremacy, and the monarchical and aristocratical authorities also, are de- 
veloped with the fluctuations of society, through their combined tumultuous collisions ; 
until the invention of printing, and the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century, with 
the Reformation, produced a convulsion, whose mighty workings still are exhibited, and 
the rich fruits of which constantly become more plentiful and fragrant. 

" The two lectures which close the series, are devoted to the English revolution of the 
seventeenth, and the Frencli revolution of the eighteenth century. 

" There are two features in M. Guizot's lectures which are as attractive as they are 
novel. One is, the lofty moral and religious principles which he inculcates. We doubl 
that very few professors of history in our own country, in their prelections, among their 
students, within an American College, would have commingled such a continuous stream 
of the best ethics, with a subject avowedly secular, as M. Guizot has incorporated with 
his lectures addressed to the Parisian infidels. 

"Another is, the predominant influence which he has attributed to Christianity, in 
effecting the progressive melioration of European society. 

" To the friends of religious freedom especially M. Guizot's Lectures on Civilization 
are a most acceptable present ; because they are not the result of a controvertist's en 
deavours to sustain his own .opinions in a polemical conflict with an adversary, but the 
deliberate judgment of an impartial observer, who has embodied his decisions m 
cidentally, while discussing another topic." — JV. F. American. 

PREPARINO- FOR PUBLICATION, 

COMPLETE HISTORY OF IVIODERN CIVILIZATION ; 

From the Fall of the Roman Empire until the Year 1789. With com- 
plete Clironological and Historical Tables. Translated from the French 
of M. Guizot. 

This volume is the second part of M. Guizot's " Course of Modem History," in thirty 
three Lectures, and is an erudite and luminous development of the principal changes, 
events, derangements, and organization of the modern Eurc^jean nations after the fali 
of the Roman Empire, until they assumed their present chief characteristics. It forms 
a complete filling up, in minute details, of the former work, and is precisely adapted to 
anfold the origin, attributes, and operations of the political systems connected with feu 
dalism, and the subsequent revolutions of Khe kingdoms of Euroj*. 



HISTORY 



THE EI&LISH REVOLUTIOI 

OF 1640, 



COMMONLY CALLED 



THE GREAT REBELLION: 

FROM THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES L 
TO HIS DEATH. 



BY F/GUIZOT, 

THE PRIME MINISTER OF FRANCE; 
AUTHOR OF " HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE," ETC., ETC. 



TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM HAZJjgPIi 



NEW YORK: ^ofy-^:, 

D. APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY. 

PHILADELPHIA: / ^ ''/ ■^ 
G. S. APPLETON, 148 CHESNUT-STREET. 

CINCINNATI : DERBY, BRADLEY, & COMPANY, 113 MAIN-STREET. 
M DCCC XLVI. 






THE LIS#, 
JOI" CONGRESS 

[WAJHINGTON 



ESS^I 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The full explanation given by M. Guizot, in the follow- 
ing preface, of the nature of this work, renders any 
remark on my part unnecessary. I will therefore merely 
state that in translating it my desire has been to render 
the author's meaning as nearly as possible in his own 
style ; whether I have succeeded in this object, it is for 
others to determine. As to the books, documents, and 
speeches quoted, I have in all cases gone back to the 
original sources consulted by the author, and given the 
ipsissima verba of the respective writer or speaker. M. 
Guizot, in setting forth his authorities, refers to his own 
edition of the Memoirs relative to our Revolution (a 
most valuable publication) ; the references in my trans- 
lation are to the best English edition of each work 
cited. The ample index now given is an entirely new 
feature, and will, I trust, be accepted as an important 
one. 

William Hazlitt. 

Middle Temple, 
Dec, 1845. 



PREFACE 

TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



I HAVE published the original memoirs of the English revo- 
lution ; I now publish its history. Previous to the French 
revolution, this was the greatest event which Europe had to 
narrate. 

I have no fear of its importance being underrated ; our 
revolution, in surpassing, did not make that of England less 
great in itself; they were both victories in the same war, and 
to the profit of the same cause ', glory is their common attri- 
bute ; they do not eclipse, but set off each other. My fear is 
lest their true character should be mistaken, lest the world 
should not assign to them that place which is properly theirs 
in the world's history. 

According to an opinion now widely adopted, it would 
seem as though these two revolutions were unexpected events, 
which, emanating from principles and conceived in designs 
unheard of before, threw society out of its ancient and natural 
course ; hurricanes, earthquakes — instances, in a word, of 
those mysterious phenomena which altogether depart from 
the ordinary laws of nature, and which burst forth suddenly 
— ^blows, as it were, of Providence — it may be to destroy, i 
may be to renovate. Friends and enemies, panegyrists and 
detractors, alike adopt this view. According to the one class, 
they were glorious events, which brought to light, for the 
first time, truth, liberty, and justice, before the occurrence of 
which all was absurdity, iniquity, and tyranny ; to which alone 
the human race owes its terrestrial salvation. According to 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



the other class, they were deplorable calamities, which inter- 
rupted a long golden age of wisdom, virtue, and happiness ; 
whose perpetrators proclaimed maxims, put forward preten- 
sions, and committed crimes, till then without parallel : the 
nations in a paroxysm of madness dashed aside from their 
accustomed road ; an abyss opened beneath their feet. 

Thus, whether they exalt or deplore them, whether they 
bless or curse them, all parties, in considering revolutions, 
forget all the circumstances, alike isolate them absolutely from 
the past, alike make them in themselves responsible for the 
destiny of the world, and load them with anathema or crown 
them with glory. 

It is time to get clear of all such false and puerile declama- 
tion. 

Far from having interrupted the natural course of events 
in Europe, neither the English revolution nor our own, ever 
said, wished, or did anything that had not been said, wished, 
done, or attempted, a hundred times before they burst forth. 
They proclaimed the illegality of absolute power ; the free 
consent of the people, in reference to laws and taxes, and the 
right of armed resistance, were elemental principles of the 
feudal system ; and the church has often repeated these words 
of St. Isidore, which we find in the canons of the fourth coun- 
cil of Toledo : " He is king who rules his people with justice ; 
if he rule otherwise, he shall no longer be king." They 
attacked prerogative, and sought to introduce greater equality 
into social order : kings throughout Europe have done the 
same ; and, down to our own times, the various steps in the 
progress of civil equality have been founded upon the laws 
and measured by the progress of royalty. They demanded 
that public offices should be thrown open to the citizens at 
large, should be distributed according to merit only, and that 
power should be conferred by election : this is the fundamental 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. IX 

principle of the internal government of the church, which not 
only acts upon it, but has emphatically proclaimed its worth. 
Whether we consider the general doctrines of the two revolu- 
tions, or the results to which they were applied — whether we 
regard the government of the state, or civil legislation, pro- 
perty or persons, liberty or power — nothing will be found of 
which the invention originated with them, nothing which is 
not equally met with, or which, at all events, did not come 
into existence in periods which are called regular. 

Nor is this all : those principles, those designs, those efforts 
which are attributed exclusively to the English revolution 
and to our own, not only preceded them by several centuries, 
but are pi-ecisely the same principles, the same efforts, to 
which society in Europe owes all its progress. Was it by 
its disorders and its privileges, by its brute force, and by 
keeping men down beneath its yoke, that the feudal aristo- 
cracy took part in the development of nations ? No : it 
struggled against royal tyranny, exercised the right of resist- 
ance, and maintained the maxims of liberty. For what have 
nations blessed kings ? Was it for their pretensions to divine 
right, to absolute power ? for their profusion ? for their courts ? 
No : kings assailed the feudal system and asistocratical privi- 
leges ; they introduced unity into legislation, and into the 
executive administration ; they aided the progress of equality. 
And the clergy — whence does it derive its power ? how has 
it promoted civilisation ? Was it by separating itself from the 
people, by taking fright at human reason, by sanctioning 
tyranny in the name of Heaven ? No : it gathered together, 
without distinction, in its churches, and under the law of 
God, the great and the small, the poor and the rich, the weak 
and the strong ; it honored and fostered science, instituted 
schools, favored the propagation of knowledge, and gave 
activity to the mind. Interrogate the history of the masters 



PREFACE TO THE FIKST EDITION. 



of the world ; examine the influence of the various classes 
which have decided its destiny ; wherever any good shall 
manifest itself, wherever the lasting gratitude of man shall 
recognize a great service done to humanity, it will be seen that 
these were steps towards the object which were pursued by 
the English revolution and by our own ; we shall find our- 
selves in presence of one of the principles they sought to 
establish. 

Let these mighty events, then, no longer be held forth as 
monstrous apparitions in the history of Europe ; let us hear 
no more about their unheard-of pretensions, their infernal 
inventions. They advanced civilisation in the path it has 
been pursuing for fourteen centuries ; they professed the 
maxims, they forwarded the Avorks to which man has, in all 
time, owed the development of his nature and the ameliora- 
tion of his condition ; they did that which has been by turns 
the merit and the glory of the clergy, of the aristocracy, and 
of kings. 

I do not think mankind will much longer persist in abso- 
lutely condenming them because they are chargeable with 
errors, calamities, and crimes. Admit all this to the full : 
nay, exceed the severity of the condemners, and closely ex- 
amine their accusations to supply their omissions ; then sum- 
mon them, in their turn, to draw up the list of errors, the 
crimes, and the calamities, of those times and those powers 
which they have taken under their protection : I much doubt 
whether they will accept the challenge. 

It may be asked : in what respect, then, are the two revolu- 
tions so distinguishable from any other epoch, that carrying 
on, as they did, the common work of ages, they merited their 
name, and changed, in effect, the face of the world ? The 
answer is this : 

Various powers have successively predominated in Euro- 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



pean society, and led by turns the march of civilisation. After 
the fall of the Roman empire and the invasion of the Barba- 
rians, amid the dissolution of all ties, the ruin of all regular 
power, dominion everywhere fell into the hands of bold brute 
force. The conquering aristocracy took possession of all 
things, persons and property, people and land. In vain did a 
few great men, Charlemagne in France, Alfred in England, 
attempt to subject this chaos to the unity of the monarchical 
system. All unity was impossible. The feudal hierarchy 
was the only form that society would accept. It pervaded 
everything, Church as well as State ; bishops and abbots 
became barons, the king was merely chief lord. Yet, rude 
and unsettled as was this organization, Europe is indebted to 
it for its first step out of barbarism. It was among the pro- 
prietors of fiefs, by their mutual relations, their laws, their 
customs, their feelings, their ideas, that European civilisation 
began. 

They weighed fearfully upon the people. The clergy alone 
sought to claim, on behalf of the community, a little reason, 
justice, and humanity. He who held no place in the feudal 
hierarchy, had no other asylum than the churches, no other 
protectors than the priests. Inadequate as it was, yet this 
protection was immense, for there was none beside. More- 
over, the priests alone offered some food to the moral nature of 
man; to that invincible craving after thought, knowledge, 
hope, and belief, which overcomes all obstacles and survives 
all misfortune. The church soon acquired a prodigious power 
in every part of Europe. Nascent royalty added to its 
strength by borrowing its assistance. The preponderance 
passed from the conquering aristocracy to the clergy. 

By the co-operation of the church and its own inherent 
vigor, royalty rose up to a stature above that of its rivals ; 
but the clergy which had aided, now wished to enslave it. In 



PREFACE TO THE PIEST EDITION. 



this new danger, royalty called to its assistance sometimes the 
barons, now become less formidable, more frequently the com- 
mons, the people, already strong enough to give good help, but 
not strong enough to demand a high price for their services. 
By their aid, royalty triumphed in its second struggle, and be- 
came in its turn the ruling power, invested with the confidence 
of nations. 

Such is the history of ancient Europe. The feudal aris- 
tocracy, the clergy, royalty, by turns possessed it, successively 
presided over its destiny and its progress. It was to their 
co-existence and to their struggles that it was, for a long 
time, indebted for all it achieved of liberty, prosperity, en- 
lightenment ; in a word, for the development of its civilisa- 
tion. 

In the seventeenth century in England, in the eighteenth in 
France, all struggle between these three powers had ceased ; 
they lived together in sluggish peace. It may even be said, 
that they had lost their historical character, and even the 
remembrance of those efforts, which, of old, constituted their 
power and their splendor. The aristocracy no longer pro- 
tected public liberty, nor even its own • royalty no longer 
labored to abolish aristocratical privilege ; it seemed, on the 
contrary, to have become favorable to its possessors, in re- 
turn for their servility. The clergy, a spiritual power, feared 
the human mind, and no longer able to guide, called upon it 
with threats, to check its career. Still civilisation followed its 
course, daily more general and more active. Forsaken by its 
ancient leaders, astonished at their apathy and at the humor 
they displayed, and at seeing that less was done for it as its 
power and its desires grew larger, the people began to think it 
had better take to transact its own affairs itself; and, assum 
ing in its own person all the functions which its former leaders 
no longer fulfilled, claimed at once of the crown liberty, of the 



PREPACK TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



aristocracy equality, of the clergy the rights of human intel- 
ect. Then burst forth revolutions. 

These did, for the benefit of a new power, what Europe had 
in other cases already several times witnessed ; they gave to 
society leaders who would and could direct it in its progress. 
By this title alone had the aristocracy, the church, and royalty 
by turns enjoyed the preponderance. The people now took 
possession of it by the same means, in the name of the same 
necessities. 

Such was the true operation, the real characteristic of the 
English revolution as well as of our own. After having con- 
sidered them as absolutely alike, it has been said that they 
had nothing but appearances in common. The first, it has 
been contended, was political rather then social ; the second 
sought to change at once both society and government ; the 
one sought liberty, the other equality ; the one, still more re- 
ligious than political, only substituted dogma for dogma, a 
church for a church ; the other, philosophical more especially, 
claimed the full independence of reason : an ingenious compa- 
rison, and not without its truth, but well nigh as superficial, as 
frivolous as the opinion it pretends to correct. While, under 
the external resemblance of the two revolutions, great differ- 
ences are perceptible, so, beneath their differences, is hidden a 
resemblance still more profound. The English revolution, it 
is true, from the same causes that brought it forth an age be- 
fore ours, retained a more decided impress of the ancient social 
state : there, free institutions, which had their origin in the 
very depth of barbarism, had survived the despotism they 
could not prevent ; the feudal aristocracy, or at least a portion 
of it, had united its cause to that of the people ; royalty, even 
in the days of its supremacy, had never been fully or undis- 
turbedly absolute ; the national church had itself begun reli- 
gious reform, and called forth the daring inquiries of mind. 
2 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



Everywhere, in the laws, the creed, the manners of the people, 
revolution found its work half accomplished ; and from that 
order of things which it sought to change, came at once assist- 
ance and obstacles, useful allies and still powerful adversaries. 
It thus presented a singular mixture of elements, to all appear- 
ance the most contrary, at once aristocratic and popular, 
religious and philosophical, appealing alternately to laws and 
theories ; now proclaiming a new yoke for conscience, now its 
entire liberty ; sometimes narrowly confined withm the limits 
of facts, at others soaring to the most daring attempts ; placed, 
in short, between the old and new social state, rather as a 
bridge over which to pass from the one to the other, than as an 
abyss of separation. 

The most terrible unity, on the contrary, pervaded the 
French revolution ; the new spirit alone dominated ; and the 
old system, far from taking its part and its place in the move- 
ment, only sought to defend itself against it, and only defended 
itself for a moment ; it was alike without power as without 
virtue. On the day of the explosion, one fact only remained 
real and powerful, the general civilisation of the country. In 
this great but sole result, old institutions, old manners, creeds, 
the memory of the past, the whole national life, had fused 
themselves and become lost. So many active and glorious 
ages had produced only France. Hence the immense results 
of the revolution, and also its immense errors ; it possessed ab- 
solute power. 

Assuredly there is a great difference, and one worthy to be 
well borne in mind ; it strikes us more especially when we 
regard the two revolutions in themselves as isolated events, 
detached from general history, and seek to unravel, if I may 
so express it, their peculiar physiognomy, their individual 
character. But let them resume their place in the course of 
ages, and then inquire what they have done towards the de- 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



velopment of European civilisation, and the resemblance will 
reappear, will rise above all minor differences. Produced by 
the same causes, the decay of the feudal aristocracy, the 
church, and royalty, they both labored at the same work, the 
dominion of the public in public affairs ; they struggled for 
liberty against absolute power, for equality against privilege, 
for progressive and general interests against stationary and 
individual interests. Their situations were different, their 
strength unequal ; what the one clearly conceived, the other 
saw but in imperfect outline ; in the career which the one ful- 
filled, the other soon stopped short ; on the same battle-field, 
the one found victory, the other defeat ; the sin of the one was 
contempt of all religious principle, of the other hypocrisy ; 
one was wiser, the other more powerful ; but their means and 
their success alone differed ; their tendency, as well as their 
origin, was the same ; their wishes, their efforts, their progress, 
were directed towards the same end ; what the one attempted 
or accomplished, the other accomplished or attempted. Though 
guilty of religious persecution, the English revolution saw the 
banner of religious liberty uplifted in its ranks ; notwithstand- 
ing its aristocratic alliances, it founded the preponderance of 
the commons ; though especially intent upon civil order, it 
still called for more simple legislation, for parliamentary re- 
form, the abolition of entails, and of primogenitureship ; and 
though disappointed in premature hopes, it enabled English 
society to take a great stride out of the monstrous inequality 
of the feudal system. In a word, the analogy of the two revo- 
lutions is such, that the first would never have been thoroughly 
imderstood had not the second taken place. 

In our days, the history of the English revolution has 
changed its face. Hume* for a long series of years enjoyed 

* The first volume of Hume's History of the House of Stuart ap- 
peared in England in 1754, and the second in 1756. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITIOH. 



the privilege of forming, in accordance with his views, the 
opinion of Europe ; and, notwithstanding the aid of Mirabeau,* 
Mrs. Macauley's declamations had not been able to shake his 
authority. All at once, men's minds have recovered their 
natural independence ; a crowd of works have attested, not 
only that this epoch has become once more the object of lively 
sympathy, but that the narrative and opinions of Hume have 
ceased to satisfy the imagination and reason of the public. A 
great orator, Mr. Fox,']' distinguished writers, Mr Malcolm 
Laing,:j: Macdiarmid,§ Brodie,|| Lingard,1I Godwin,** &c., hast- 
ened to meet this new-roused curiosity. Born in France, the 
movement could not fail to make its way there ; UHistoire de 
Cromwell by M. Villemain, L'Histoire de la Revolution de 
1688, by M. Mazure, evidently prove, that neither for us was 
Hume sufficient ; and I have been able myself, to publish the 
voluminous collection of the original memoirs of that epoch, 

* Mrs. Macauley's work was to have been a " History of England 
from the Accession of James the First to the Elevation of the House 
of Hanover," but it reaches no further than the fall of James the Se- 
cond. It was published in England from 1763 to 17S3. Of the French 
translation, sent forth in 1791, under the name of Mirabeau, only two 
volumes appeared. 

f History of the Two Last Kings of the House of Stuart, 4to., Lon- 
don, 180S. 

f History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union 
of the Kingdom, 4 vols., Svo. First published, 1800. 

§ Lives of British Statesmen, 2 vols. Svo, second edition, London, 
1820. The second volume contains the Lives of Strafford and Claren- 
don. 

II History of the British Empire, from the Accession of Charles the 
First to the Restoration of Charles the Second, 4 vols. Svo., Edinburgh, 
1822. 

IT History of England ; the 9th and 10th volumes (London, 1825, 
Svo.) contain the reigns of James I., and Charles I. 

** History of the Commonwealth of England ; London, 1824 ; 4 vols., 
Svo. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



without wearying the attention or exhausting the curiosity of 
readers.* 

It would little become me to enter here into a detailed ex- 
amination of these works ; but I do not hesitate to assert that, 
without the French revolution, without the vivid light it threw 
on the struggle between the Stuarts and the English people, 
they would not possess the new merits which distinguish 
them. I need only as a proof, the difference that is to be re- 
marked between those produced by Great Britain, and those 
which France gave birth to. How great soever the patriotic 
interest inspired in the mind of the former, by the revolution 
of 1640, even when they place themselves under the banner 
of one of the parties which it educed, historical criticism 
reigns throughout their works ; they apply themselves more 
especially to exact research, to the comparison and cross- 
questioning of witnesses ; what they relate, is to them an old 
story they thoroughly know, not a drama at which they are 
present ; a period long past, which they pride themselves on 
being well acquainted with, but in whose bosom they live not. 
Mr. Brodie fully participates in all the prejudices, distrust, 
and anger of the bitterest puritans against Charles and the 
cavaliers ; while, to the faults and crimes of his party, he is 
wholly blind. But, at least, one would imagine so much 
passion would produce an animated narrative ; that the party 
exciting so much sympathy in the mind of the writer, would 
be described with truth and power. Not so : despite the ar. 
dor of his predilections, Mr. Brodie studies, but sees not, 
discusses, but describes not ; he admires the popular party, 
but does not produce it strikingly on the stage ; his work is a 
learned and useful dissertation, not a moral and animated his- 
tory, Mr. Lingard shares in none of the opinions, none of 

* This Collection, now completed, forms 25 vols. 8vo. Paris 
Didier. 

2* 



XVIU PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

the affections of Mr. Brodie j he remains impartial between 
the king and the parliament ; he pleads the cause of neither, 
and makes no attempt to refute the errors of his predecessors ; 
he even boasts of not having opened the work of Hume since 
he undertook his own ; he wrote, he says, with the aid of 
original documents alone, with the times he wished to describe 
ever before his eyes, and with the firm resolution of shunning 
all systematic theory. Does he restore life to history by this 
impartiality ? Not at all : Mr. Lingard's impartiality is, in 
this case, sheer indifference ; a Roman-catholic priest, it 
matters little to him whether Church of England men or 
presbyterians triumph ; thus, indifference has helped him no 
better than passion did Mr. Brodie to penetrate beyond the 
external, and, so to speak, the material form of events ; with 
him, too, the principal merit is in having carefully examined 
facts, and collected and disposed them in commendable order. 
Mr. Malcolm Laing had discerned with more sagacity the 
political character of the revolution ; he shows very well that 
from the first, without distinctly apprehending its own aim, 
it sought to displace power, to transfer it to the house of 
commons, and thus to substitute parliamentary for royal go- 
vernment, and that it could only rest on this basis. But the 
moral side of the epoch, the religious enthusiasm, the popular 
passions, the party intrigues, the personal rivalries, all those 
scenes in which human nature displays itself, when freed 
from the restraint of old habits and laws, are wanting in his 
book ; it is the report of a clear-sighted judge, but of one who 
has only resorted to written documents, and has called before 
him in person neither actors nor witnesses. I might pass in 
review all the works with which England has been recently 
enriched on this subject ; they would all, on examination, be 
found to present the same character — a marked revival of in- 
terest in this great crisis of the national life, a more attentive 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



study of the facts that relate to it, a keener feeling of its 
merits, a juster appreciation of its causes and consequences ; 
still it is but meditation and learning applied to the production 
of works of erudition or philosophy. I seek in vain for that 
natural sympathy in the writer for his subject that gives to 
history light and life ; and if Hampden or Clarendon were to 
return to life, I can scarcely believe they would recognize 
their own times. 

I open the Histoire de Cromwell by M. Villemain, and find 
altogether another scene before me. It is less complete, less 
learned, less exact than several of the works I have adverted 
to ; but, thi'oughout, there is a quick and keen comprehension 
of the opinions, the passions, the vicissitudes of revolutions, 
of public tendencies, and individual character, of the uncon- 
querable nature and the so changing forms of parties ; the 
historian's reason teaches him how to appreciate all situations, 
all ideas ; his imagination is moved by all real and deep im- 
pressions ; his impartiality, somewhat too sceptical if any- 
thing, is yet more animated than is frequently even the passion 
of the exclusive advocates of a cause ; and though the revo- 
lution only appears in his book confined within the too narrow 
frame of a biography, it is clearer and more animated than I 
have met with it elsewhere. 

The reason of this is, that, setting aside the advantages of 
talent, M. Villemain had those of situation. He has viewed 
and judged the English revolution from the midst of that of 
France ; he found in the men and the events developing 
themselves beneath his own eyes, the key to those he had to 
paint ; he drew life from his own times and infused it into the 
times he wished to recal. 

I have no desire to carry these reflections further ; I have 
ventured so much only to point out how great is the analogy 
between the two epochs, and also to explain how a French- 



XX PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

man may believe that the history of the English revolution 
has not yet been written in a fully satisfactory manner, and 
that he may be allowed to attempt it. I have carefully 
studied nearly all the old and modern works of which it has 
formed the subject ; I did not fear that this study would 
weaken the sincerity of my own impressions or the indepen- 
dence of my judgment ; it seems to me there is too much 
timidity in dreading so readily lest an auxiliary should be- 
come a master ; too much pride in refusing so absolutely all 
aid. Yet, and if I do not deceive myself it will easily be re- 
cognized, original documents have more peculiarly been my 
guides. I have nothing to observe here, as to the " Memoirs ;'' 
I endeavored in the " Notices " I prefixed to my edition 
of them, clearly to explain their character and worth ; 
Those which did not find a place in my " Collection," though 
I have made use of them in my " History," appear to me of 
too little importance to require remark. As for the collections 
of official acts and documents, they are very numerous ; and, 
though often explored, still abound in unworked treasures. 
I have had constantly before me those of Rushworth, Thurloe, 
the journals of both houses of parliament, the " Parliamentary 
History," the old one as well as that of Mr. Cobbett, the 
" Collection of State Trials," and a great number of other 
works of the same kind, which it would be uninteresting to 
enumerate. I also found in the pamphlets of the time, not 
only English, but French, some curious information ; for the 
French public was more occupied than is imagined with the 
English revolution ; many pamphlets were published in 
France for and against it, and the Frondeurs more than once 
put forward its example, against Mazarin and the court. I 
must also say, to do justice to a man and a work now too 
much neglected, that I have often consulted with profit the 
History of England, by Rapin de Thoyras ; and that, not- 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XXI 

withstanding the inferiority of the writer's talents, the 
English revolution is perhaps better understood in it, and 
more completely displayed than in the works of most of its 
successors. 

In conclusion, let me be allowed to express here my gra- 
titude to all those persons who, in France and in England, 
have been good enough to sanction my work in its progress, 
and to promote it by the most valuable assistance. Amongst 
others, I owe to the kindness of Sir James Mackintosh, as 
inexhaustible as his mind and knowledge, suggestions and 
advice which no one but himself could have given me ; and 
one of those, who, amongst ourselves, are the most versed in 
the past history as well as in the present state of England, 
M. Gallois, has thrown open to me, with a kindness I have 
some right to consider friendship, the treasures of his library 
and his conversation. 

F. G. 

Paris, April, 1826. 



ADVERTISEMENT 

TO THE EDITION OF 1841 



The History of the Revolution of England comprises three 
grand periods. In the first, under Charles I. (1625 — 1649), 
the Revolution was preparing, was put forth, and took its 
stand. In the second, under the Long Parliament and Crom- 
well (1649 — 1660), it essayed to found its own form of govern- 
ment, which it called a Republic, and fell in the attempt. 
The third period is that of monarchical re-action, successful 
for a while, under Charles II., who, in his cautious selfishness, 
aimed at nothing beyond his own personal enjoyment, but 
ruined by the blind passion of James II., who aimed at abso- 
lute power. In 1688, England achieved the point she aimed 
at in 1640, and quitted the career of revolution for that of 
liberty. 

I publish, without alteration, a new edition of my History 
of the first period. I have collected, for that of the two other 
periods, a body of materials which, as I believe, are neither 
without importance or variety. A day will doubtless come, 
when I shall be able to make use of these materials : mean- 
time, wanting the leisure to complete my narrative of this 
stupendous event, I apply my mind at every available moment, 
to its just comprehension. 

F. Go 

Paris, January, 1S41. 



m 



HISTORY 

OF 

THE EIGLISH REVOLUTION, 



FROM THE 



ACCESSION OF CHARLES I. TO HIS DEATH. 



BOOK THE FIRST 
1625—1629. 



Accession of Charles the First to the throne — State and disposition of 
England — Meeting of the first parliament — Spirit of liberty mani- 
fested therein — Its dissolution — First attempts at arbitrary govern- 
ment — Their bad success — Second parliament — Impeachment of the 
Duke of Buckingham — Dissolution of parliament — 111 administration 
of Buckingham — Third parliament — Petition of rights — Prorogation 
of parliament — Murder of Buckingham — Second session of the third 
parliament — Fresh causes of public discontent — The king's dis- 
pleasure — Dissolution of the third parliament. 

On the 27th of March, 1625, Charles the First ascended the 
throne, and immediately afterwards (2d April) convoked a 
parliament. Scarcely was the house of commons assembled 
(18th June), when a worthy man, who had been reckoned in 
the last reign among the opponents of the court. Sir Benjamin 
Rudyard, rose (22d June) and moved that henceforth nothing 
should be neglected to maintain a perfect harmony between 
the king and the people : " For," said he, " what may we 
expect from him, being king ; his good natural disposition, 
his freedom from vice, his travels abroad, his being bred in 
parliament, promise greatly."* 

All England, indeed, gave way to joy and hope. And it 
was not merely those vague hopes, those tumultuous rejoic- 
ings, which a new reign, as a matter of course, gives rise to j 

* Pari. Hist., vol. ii., col. 5. 
3 



26 HISTORY OF THB 



they were serious, general, and seemingly well founded. 
Charles was a prince of grave and pure conduct, of acknow- 
ledged piety, diligent, learned, frugal, little inclined to prodi- 
gality, reserved without moroseness, dignified without arro- 
gance. He maintained decorum and order in his household ; 
everything about him announced a noble, upright character, 
the friend of justice ; his manners and deportment awed his 
courtiers, and pleased the people ; his virtues had gained him 
the esteem of all good men. Weary of the mean ways, the 
talkative and familiar pedantry, the inert and pusillanimous 
policy of James, England promised herself happiness and 
liberty under a king whom she could I'espect. 

Charles and the English nation did not know to what a 
degree they were already antagonistic one to the other, nor 
the causes which, long since at work, and growing each day 
more powerful, would soon prevent the possibility of their 
understanding and agreeing with each other. 

Two revolutions, the one visible and even glaring, the other 
internal, unperceived, but not the less certain, were being 
accomplished at this epoch ; the first, in the kingly power of 
Europe ; the second, in the social state and manners of the 
English people. 

It was just at this time, that, on the continent, royalty, freed 
from its ancient trammels, was becoming everywhere well 
nigh absolute. In France, in Spain, in most of the states of 
the German empire, it had quelled the feudal aristocracy, and 
was ceasing to protect the liberty of the commons, having no 
longer need of them to oppose to other enemies. The higher 
nobility, as if it had lost even the feeling of its defeat, crowded 
around the throne, almost proud of the brilliant display of its 
conquerors. The burghers, dispersed, and of a timid nature, 
rejoicing in the order now beginning to prevail, productive of 
a happiness till then unknown to them, labored to enrich and 
enlighten themselves, without aspiring as yet to any place in 
the government of the state. Everywhere, the pomp of courts, 
the dispatch of administrative business, the extent and regu- 
larity of wars, proclaimed the preponderance of royal power. 
The maxims of divine right and passive obedience prevailed, 
feebly contested even where not recognized. In a word, the 
progress of civilisation, of letters, and arts, of internal peace 
and prosperity, embellishing this triumph of pure monarchy, 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 27 

inspired princes with a presumptuous confidence, and people 
with admiring compliance. 

Royalty in England had not remained an exception to this 
European movement. From the accession of the house of 
Tudor, in 1485, it had ceased to have as adversaries those 
proud barons, who, too weak to struggle individually against 
their king, had formerly, by coalescing together, been able 
now to maintain their own rights, at other times to associate 
themselves, by main force, in the exercise of royal power. 
Broken up, impoverished, reduced by its own excesses, above 
all by the wars Of the two Roses, this aristocracy, so long 
unmanageable, yielded, almost without resistance, first to the 
haughty tyranny of Henry VIII., and afterwards to the skilful 
policy of Elizabeth. Become the head of the church, and the 
possessor of immense estates, Henry, by distributing these 
with lavish hand among families whose greatness he himself 
thus created, or whose fallen fortunes he thus restored, began 
the metamorphosis of barons into courtiers. Under Elizabeth 
this metamorphosis was completed. A woman and a queen, a 
biilliant court at once gratified her taste and her sense of 
power, and augmented that power ; the nobility thronged 
thither with delight, and without too much exciting public 
discontent. It was a rare temptation thus to devote them- 
selves to a popular sovereign, and to seek by intrigues, and 
amid constant festivities, the favor of a queen who enjoyed 
that of the country. 

The maxims, the forms, and the language, often even the 
practices of pure monarchy, were forgiven in a government 
useful and glorious to the nation ; the affection of the people 
kept full pace with the servility of the courtiers ; and towards 
a woman, all whose perils were public perils, unbounded 
devotion seemed a law to the gentleman, a duty to the pro- 
testant and citizen. 

The Stuarts could not fail to advance in the path which, 
since the accession of the Tudors, English royalty had entered 
upon. A Scotchman, and of the blood of Guise, James I., by 
his family reminiscences and the habits of his country, was 
attached to France, and accustomed to seek his allies and his 
models on the continent, where, ordinarily, an English prince 
only saw enemies : accordingly, he soon showed himself still 
more profoundly imbued than Elizabeth and even than Henry 



28 HISrORY OF TiiE 

VIII. himself, with the maxims which, at that time, were in 
Europe the basis of pure monarchy ; he professed them with 
the pride of a theologian and the complacency of a king, pro- 
testing on every occasion, by the pomp of his declarations, 
against the timidity of his acts and the limits of his power. 
Compelled, sometimes, to defend, by more direct and simpler 
arguments, the measures of his government, arbitrary impri- 
sonments or illegal taxes, James at such times alleged the 
example of the king of France or of Spain, " The king of 
England," said his ministers to the house of commons, " must 
not be worse off than his equals." And such, even in England, 
was the influence of the revolution lately accomplished in 
continental monarchy, that the adversaries of the court were 
embarrassed by this language, almost convinced themselves that 
the inherent dignity of princes required that all should enjoy 
the same rights, and at a loss how to reconcile this necessary 
equality among kings with the liberties of their country.* 

Nurtured from his infancy in these pretensions and these 
maxims, prince Charles, upon arriving at manhood, was stili 
nearer exposed to their contagion. The infanta of Spain w^s 
promised to him : the duke of Buckingham suggested to him 
the idea of going secretly to Madrid to sue in person for her 
heart and hand. So romantic a design pleased the young 
man's imagination. The next thing was to obtain the king's 
consent. James refused, flew into a passion, wept, and a\ 
last yielded to his favorite rather than to his son.f Charles 
was received at Madrid with great honors (March, 1623), 
and there saw, in all its splendor, monarchy majestic, supreme, 
receiving from its immediate servants a devotion, and from 
the people a respect, almost religious ; rarely contradicted, 
and even then always sure of ultimately getting the better of 
all opposition, by its mere will. The match with the infanta 
was broken off"; so Charles married, instead of her, Henrietta- 
Maria, princess of France ;:{: for his father had made up his 
mind, that beyond those two courts there was no alliance 
suitable to the dignity of his throne. The influence of this 
union on the English prince was precisely the same which he 

* Journals of the Commons, 1614. 
t Clarendon's History of the Rebellion (179S), i., 18. 
t The marriage negotiated in 1624 was not definitively concluded 
till May, 1625 ; it took place in England the next month. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 29 

had felt in Spain ; and the monarchy of Paris or Madrid 
became in his eyes the very image of the natural and legiti- 
mate condition of a king. 

Thus English monarchy, at least in the monarch, his coun- 
sellors, and his court, followed the same direction as the mo- 
narchies of the continent. Here, also, everything manifested 
the symptoms and effects of the I'evolution already accom- 
plished elsewhere, and which, in its most moderate pretensions, 
only allowed the liberties of subjects to exist as subordinate 
rights, as concessions by the sovereign's generosity. 

But while on the continent this revolution found the people 
as yet incapable of resisting it, perhaps even disposed to 
receive it, in England a counter-revolution, secretly at work 
in society, had already mined away the ground under the 
feet of pure monarchy, and prepared its ruin amid its fancied 
progress. 

When, on the accession of the Tudors, the high aristocracy 
bowed and humbled itself before the throne, the English 
commons were not in a position to take its place in the strug- 
gle of liberty against power ; they would not even have dared 
to aspire to the honor of the contest. In the fourteenth cen- 
tury, at the time of their most rapid progress, their ambition 
was limited to the obtaining a recognition of their most simple 
and primitive rights, to the achieving a few incomplete and 
precarious guarantees. Never had their fancy soared so high 
as to give them the notion that they had any right, that they 
were called upon to take a share in the sovereignty, to par- 
ticipate in a permanent and positive manner in the govern- 
ment of the country ; the barons alone, they thought, were 
fitted for so high a purpose. 

In the sixteenth century, harassed and ruined, like the 
barons, by the civil wars, the commons needed above all 
things order and repose ; this royalty gave them, imperfectly 
indeed, but still more secure and better regulated than they 
had ever known it before. They accepted the benefit with 
earnest gratitude. Separated from their ancient leaders, 
standing well nigh alone in presence of the throne and of 
those barons who once were their allies, their language was 
humble, their conduct timid, and the king might well have 
believed that thenceforward the people would be as docile as 
the great nobles. 



80 HISTOKY OF THE 



But the people was not in England, as on the continent, an 
ill-combined coalition of citizens and peasants, whose eman- 
cipation from their ancient servitude had proceeded by very 
slow degrees, and who were not yet quite free from the yoke. 
The English house of commons had, as early as the four- 
teenth century, received within its walls the most numerous 
class of the English aristocracy, all the proprietors of small 
fiefs, who had not sufficient influence or wealth to share with 
the barons the sovereign power, but were proud of the same 
origin, and had long possessed the same rights. Become the 
leaders of the nation, these men had more than once commu- 
nicated to it a strength, and, above all, a boldness, of which 
the commonalty alone would have been incapable. Weakened 
and depressed, in common with the lower orders, by the long 
miseries of civil discord, they soon, in the bosom of peace, 
resumed their importance and their pride. While the higher 
nobility, flocking to court to repair their losses, were invested 
with factitious greatness, as corrupting as precarious, and 
which, without giving them back their former fortunes, sepa- 
rated them more and more from the people ; the gentry, the 
freeholders, the citizens, solely occupied in improving their 
lands or their commercial capital, were increasing in riches 
and credit, were becoming daily more closely united, were 
drawing the entire people under their influence ; and, without 
show, without political design, almost unconsciously to them- 
selves, were taking possession of all the social strength, the 
true source of power. 

In the towns, commerce and industry were rapidly de- 
veloping themselves ; the city of London had already 
acquired immense wealth ; the king, the court, nearly all the 
great nobles of the kingdom, became its debtors, as neces- 
sitous as insolent. The mercantile marine, that nursery of 
the royal navy, was numerous, and active in every quarter, 
and the sailors seemed imbued with all the earnestness of their 
employers. 

In the country, things followed the same course. Property 
was more and more divided out. The feudal laws opposed 
obstacles to the sale and subdivision of fiefs : a statute of 
Henry VII. to a great extent removed these obstacles indi- 
rectly ; the high nobility received this as a favor, and hastened 
to profit by it. They, in like manner, alienated most of the 



EN&LISH KE VOLUTION. 31 

vast domains that Henry VIII. had distributed among them.* 
The king favored these sales in order to augment the number 
of possessors of ecclesiastical property, and the courtiers were 
fain to have recourse to them, for all the abuses within their 
reach did not suffice for their necessities. By and by, Eliza- 
beth, to avoid asking for subsidies, always burdensome even 
to the power that obtains them, sold a large extent of the 
crown lands. Nearly all these were bought by gentlemen 
who lived on their estates, by freeholders who cultivated theirs, 
or by citizens retiring from trade, for they alone had acquired 
by their industry or economy the means of paying for that 
which the prince and the courtiers could not keep. Agricul- 
ture was prospering, the counties and towns were becoming 
filled with a rich, active, and independent population ; and the 
movement that put into their hands a large proportion of the 
public wealth was so rapid, that, in 1628, at the opening of 
parliament, the house of commons was three times as rich as 
the house of lords. f 

As this revolution was accomplishing itself, the commons 
again began to grow uneasy under tyranny. With greater 
property, greater securities became necessary. Rights exer- 
cised by the prince for a long time without dispute, and still 
without obstacle, came well nigh to be deemed abuses when 
a much greater number of persons felt their weight. It was 
asked, had the king of England always possessed them ? — 
whether he ought ever to have possessed them ? By degrees, 
the remembrance of their ancient liberties, of the efforts that 
had achieved the great charter, and of the maxims it conse- 
crated, returned to the minds of the people. The court spoke 
with contempt of those old times, as rude and barbarous ; the 
people recalled them with respect and affection, as free and 
bold. The glorious liberties they had asserted were no longer 
of service, and yet all trace of them was not lost. Parliament 
had not ceased to meet ; kings, finding it docile, had often 

* Clarendon, v., 6. 

t Hume (History of England, Oxford, 1826, vi., 209) cites in con- 
firmation of this assertion, Sanderson and Walker, historians of little 
authority. I have not been able to discover, in contemporary writers 
whose testimony deserves more confidence, so precise a valuation of the 
comparative wealth of the two houses ; but everything attests that the 
house of commons was much richer than the house of lords. 



32 HISTORY OF THE 



even employed it as an instrument of their power. Under 
Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth, juries had showed them- 
selves complaisant, servile even, but still the institution ex- 
isted. The towns had preserved their charters, the corpora- 
tions their franchises. In short, though long strangers to 
resistance, the commons still possessed the means of resist- 
ance ; institutions tending to liberty were not half so much 
wanting as the power and will to make use of them. The 
power, however, returned to them with the revolution, which 
communicated such rapid progress to their material greatness. 
That the will might not be far behindhand, all that was needed 
was another revolution, which should inspire a moral great- 
ness, embolden their ambition, elevate their thoughts, make 
resistance a duty, and dominion a necessity. The Reforma- 
tion had this effect. 

Proclaimed in England by a despot, the Reformation began 
there in tyranny ; scarcely born, she persecuted her partisans 
and her enemies alike. Henry VIII. with one hand raised 
scaffolds for the catholics, with the other piled up faggots 
for the protestants who refused to subscribe to the creed, 
and approve the government which the new church received 
from him. 

There were, then, from the outset two reformations — that 
of the king and that of the people : the first unsettled and ser- 
vile, more attached to temporal interests than to belief, alarmed 
at the movement which had given it birth, and seeking to bor- 
row from Catholicism all that in separating from Catholicism 
it could retain ; the other, spontaneous, ardent, despising 
worldly considerations, accepting all the consequences of its 
principles — in a word, a true moral revolution, undertaken in 
the name and with the ardor of faith. 

United for some time — under queen Mary by common 
suffering, and at the accession of Elizabeth by common joy — 
the two reformations could not long fail to separate, and turn 
against each other. And such was their situation, that poll- 
tics became necessarily mixed up in their debates. In sepa- 
rating herself from the independent head of the Catholic 
church, the Anglican church had lost all its own strength, 
and no longer held her rights or her power but as of the power 
and rights of the sovereigns of the state. She was thus bound 
to the cause of civil despotism, and constrained to profess its 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 33 

maxims in order to legitimate her own origin, to serve its 
interests in order to preserve her own. On their part, the 
nonconformists, in attacking their religious adversaries, found 
themselves also compelled to attack the temporal sovereign, 
and in accomplishing the reformation of the church, to assert 
the liberties of the people. The king had succeeded to the 
pope ; the Anglican clergy, successors of the Catholic clergy, 
no longer acted but in the name of the king : throughout, in a 
dogma, a ceremony, a prayer, the erection of an altar, the 
fashion of a surplice, the royal will was compromised in com- 
mon with that of the bishops, the government in common with 
the discipline and faith. 

In this perilous necessity of a double struggle against the 
prince and the church, of a simultaneous reformation in reli- 
gion and state, the nonconformists at first hesitated. Popery, 
and everything that resembled it, was odious and unlawful in 
their sight ; but not so, as yet, royal authority, even though 
despotic. Henry VIII. had begun the reformation, Elizabeth 
saved it. The boldest puritans hesitated to measure the rights, 
to prescribe limits to a power to which they owed so much ; 
and if at intervals individuals made a step towards this holy 
object, the astonished nation thanked them silently, but did not 
follow them. 

But something must be done ; reform must either retrograde, 
or lay its hand too upon government, which alone obstructed 
its progress. By degrees, men's minds grew more daring ; 
the force of conscience gave boldness to ideas and designs ; 
religious creeds required political rights ; people began to in- 
quire why they did not enjoy them ? who had usurped them ? 
by what right ? what was the way to regain them ? The 
obscure citizen, who, lately, at the mere name of Elizabeth, 
would have bent low in fearful respect, and who, probably, 
would never have turned towards the throne a bolder look, if 
in the tyranny of the bishops he had not recognized that of 
the queen, now sternly interrogated both the one and the other 
as to their pretensions, when constrained to do so in defence 
of his faith. It was more particularly among the private gen- 
try, the freeholders, burghers, and the commonalty, that this 
feeling of inquiry and resistance in the matter of government, 
as well as in matter of faith, diffused itself, for it was among 
them that religious reform was fermenting and making its 



M HISTORY OF THE 



way. Less interested about religious creeds, the court and a 
part of the lower nobility were content with the innovations 
of Henry VIII. and his successors, and supported the Angli- 
can church from conviction, indiiference, self-interest, or loy- 
alty. Less connected with the interests, and at the same 
time more exposed to the violence of power, the English com- 
mons thenceforward entirely changed, with reference to roy- 
alty, their attitude and their ideas. Day by day, their timid- 
ity lessened, and their ambition grew. The views of the 
citizen and the freeholder ; even of the peasant, were raised 
above his condition. He was a Christian ; in his own house, 
among his friends, he boldly examined the mysteries of divine 
power ; what terrestrial power then was so exalted that he 
must abstain from considering it ? In his Bible he read the 
laws of God ; to obey them, he was forced to resist other 
laws ; he must needs then ascertain where the latter should 
stop short. He who seeks to know the limits of a master's 
rights will soon seek also their origin : the nature of royal 
power, of all powers, their ancient limits, their recent usur- 
pations, the conditions and the sources of their legitimacy, 
became throughout England the subject of examination and 
conversation : examination, at first timid, and undertaken ra- 
ther from necessity than choice ; conversation, for a long time 
secret, and which, even when held, the people were afraid to 
carry to any length, but which gave greater freedom, and a 
boldness hitherto unknown to mind. Elizabeth, however 
popular and respected, felt the effects of this growing disposi- 
tion,* and rigorously resisted it, but so as not to encounter ac- 
tual peril. Matters grew much worse under James. Weak 
and despised, he wished to be thought a despot ; the dogmatic 
display of his impotent pretensions only provoked fresh dar- 
ing, which again he irritated without repressing. The popu- 
lar thought soared high and free — it had no longer any check ; 
the monarch was an object of ridicule, his favorites, of indig- 
nation. On the throne, at court, haughty pride was without 
power, even without effect ; the base corruption to which it 
resorted, inspired thinking men with profound disgust, and 
brought the highest rank within the reach of degrading in- 
sults on the part of the populace. It was no longer the privi- 



See Appendix, No. 1. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 85 

lege of lofty minds to look nobility in the face, and measure 
it coolly : the commonest citizen equally asserted this right. 
The opposition soon appeared as haughty and more confident 
than power ; and it was not the opposition of the great barons, 
of the house of lords, it was that of the house of commons, 
resolved to take in the state a place, to assume over the go- 
vernment an influence which it had never attained. Their 
indifference to the pompous menaces of the prince, their 
haughty, though respectful language, manifested that every- 
thing was changed ; that they thought proudly, and were 
determined to act authoritatively ; and the secret impression 
of this moral revolution was already so diffused, that, in 1621, 
when awaiting a committee of the commons, which came to 
present him with a severe remonstrance, James said, with an 
irony less painful to himself than it would have been could he 
have foi'eseen coming events : " Place twelve arm-chairs — I 
am going to receive twelve kings."* 

And, in fact, it was almost a senate of kings that an abso- 
lute monarch called around his throne, when Charles I. con- 
voked the parliament. Neither the prince nor the people, 
more especially the latter, had as yet clearly ascertained the 
principle, or measured the compass of their pretensions ; they 
approached each other, with the design and sincere hope of 
union, but at bottom disunion was already complete, for both 
the one and the other thought as sovereigns. 

As soon as the session was opened, the commons began to 
look closely into every department of government ; external 
and domestic affairs, negotiation, alliances, the application of 
past subsidies and of future subsidies, the state of religion, 
the repression of popery ; nothing appeared to them beyond 
their cognizance. They complained of the Royal Navy, as 
affording inadequate protection to English commerce (Aug. 
11, 1625), of Dr. Montague, the king's chaplain, for defend- 
ing the Romish church and preaching up passive obedience 
(7th July). They expected from the king alone the redress 
of all their grievances, but meantime evinced their determi- 
nation to interfere in every case by inquiries, petitions, and 
the expression of their opinion. 

* Rapin's Hist, of England, viii., 183 ; Rennet's Hist, of England, 
iii., 743. 



36 HISTORY OF THE 



They but slightly reproached the government of Charles ; 
it was only just commencing. Yet so extended and energetic 
an examination of public affairs appeared to him already an 
encroachment ; the freedom of speech offended him. One of 
the court party, Mr. Edward Clarke, essayed a complaint on 
this head in the house ; " unbecoming and bitter words," he 
said, " had been made use of." A general cry summoned 
him to appear at the bar, and explain ; he persisted ; and the 
house was on the point of expelling him (Aug. 6). 

Their speech, indeed, was sufficiently bold, though in hum- 
bler terms. " We do not desire, as 5 Henry IV. or 29 Henry 
VI., the removing from about the king any evil counsellors. 
We do not request a choice by name, as 14 Edward II., 3, 
5, 11, Richard II., 8 Henry IV., or 31 Henry VI. ; nor to 
swear them in parliament, as 35 Edward I., 9 Edward II., or 
5 Richard II. ; or to line them out their directions of rule, as 
43 Henry III., and 8 Henry VI. ; or desire that which Henry 
III. did promise in his 42d year : ' Se acta omnia per assen- 
sum magnatum de concilio suo electorum, et sine eorum as- 
sensu nihil.' We only in loyal duty offer up our humble 
desires, that since his majesty hath, with advised judgment, 
elected so wise, religious and worthy servants, to attend him 
in that high employment, he will be pleased to advise with 
them together, a way of remedy for these disasters in state, 
brought on by long security and happy peace ; and not be led 
with young and simple council." Thus spoke (6 Aug.) Sir 
Robert Cotton, a learned, eloquent, and moderate man ; and 
the commons, while protesting with him that they had no inten- 
tion of imitating the boldness of the old parliament, congratu- 
lated themselves upon hearing it recalled to mind. 

The king grew angry, but did not openly complain. Such 
language, though disagreeable, did not appear to him as yet 
dangerous. Besides, he wanted subsidies. The last parlia- 
ment had ardently demanded war with Spain ; the new one 
could not refuse to support it. Charles insisted that without 
delay the means of prosecuting it should be furnished him, 
promising to redress just grievances. 

But the house no longer trusted to promises, not even to 
those of a king who had not yet broken any, and whom they 
esteemed. Princes inherit the faults as. well as the thrones 
of their predecessors. Charles thought the people should 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 37 

fear nothing from him, as he had done no ill ; the people, that 
all the sources of past ills should be extirpated, that nothing 
might be feared for the future. The commons only gave, at 
first, a small subsidy, and the customs duties were only voted 
for a year. This last resolution seemed an insult, and the 
lords refused to sanction it. Why should the commons, de- 
manded the court people, place less confidence in the present 
king than in his predecessors ? They all had the customs 
duties voted for the continuance of their reign. Yet his 
majesty had fully exhibited, with a rare sincerity, the state of 
the finances, refusing no document, no voucher, no explana- 
tion, that was required. The urgency of the public necessi- 
ties was evident ; there was little wisdom, thought the lords, 
in angering so soon, without motive, a young prince who 
showed himself so inclined to live on good terms with the 
parliament. 

The commons did not say they would not grant larger sub- 
sidies ; but they proceeded with the examination of grievan- 
ces ; resolved, though they did not announce the intention, to 
obtain first and foremost of all things, their redress. The 
king was indignant that they should dare to prescribe to him, 
and suppose that he would yield to force, or permit himself 
to be set aside. It was a usurpation of that sovereignty 
which belonged to him alone, and which in no case he would 
suffer to be brought in question. Parliament was dissolved 
(Aug. 12). 

Thus, notwithstanding their mutual good will, the prince 
and the people had only met to disagree ; they separated 
without either the one or the other side feeling itself weak or 
believing itself in the wrong, equally certain of the legitimacy 
of its pretensions, equally resolved to persevere in them. The 
commons protested that they were devoted to the king, but 
would not yield up to him their liberties. The king said he 
respected the liberties of his subjects, but that he would take 
care to govern by himself, without their interference. And 
he immediately set about it. Orders from the council to the 
lord lieutenants of the counties enjoined them to raise by way 
of loan the money the king wanted. They were to apply for 
this to the rich citizens in their districts, and to send to the 
court the names of those who should refuse to lend, or even 
be tardy in their loans. They calculated at once upon afFec- 
4 



HISTORY OF THE 



tion and upon fear. At the same time, the fleet sailed on an 
expedition against Cadiz, the bay of which was crowded with 
richly-freighted vessels. In order, meanwhile, to gratify the 
people, the clei'gy were directed to proceed against the Catho- 
lics, who were forbidden to go further than five miles from 
their place of abode, without previous permission, were ordered 
to recall from the continent the children whom they had sent 
there to be educated, and were disarmed. The commons de- 
manded their own liberties ; they were given, instead, a little 
tyranny over their enemies. 

This contemptible expedient did not content them : besides, 
the persecution, even of the Catholics, was equivocal, and mat- 
ter of suspicion ; the king sold them dispensations, or granted 
them pardons, under his own hand. The loan brought but 
little money to the treasury ; the expedition against Cadiz 
failed ; the public attributed the failure to the unskilfulness 
of the admiral and the drunkenness of the troops ; the govern- 
ment was accused of neither knowing how to choose its 
generals, nor how to regulate the conduct of its soldiers. Six 
months had scarcely passed, when a second parliament was 
thought necessary (Feb. 6, 1626). Rancor had not yet 
taken deep root in the soul of the young king ; and his des- 
potism was at once self-confident and timid. He thought the 
commons would be delighted to return so soon ; perhaps he 
even hoped that the firmness he had shown would render 
them more docile. He had, moreover, taken measures to 
keep from parliament the most popular orators. The earl 
of Bristol, a personal enemy of the duke of Buckingham, 
received no summons to attend. Sir Edward Coke, Sir Robert 
Philips, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Sir Francis Seymour,* and 
others, being named sheriffs of their counties, could not be 
elected for them. It was not doubted but in their absence 
the commons would be submissive ; for the people love the 
king, it was said ; 'tis only a few factious men that lead them 
astray. 

But the commons, too, had their notion that the king was 
being led astray, and that to restore him to his people, it was 
only necessary to remove him from the favorite. The first 

* Seven in all : the three others, of less note, were Sir Grey Palmer, 
Sir William Fleetwood, and Mr. Edward Alford. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 39 

parliament had limited itself to exacting from the throne, by 
delaying the subsidies, the redress of public grievances. The 
present resolved to assail, at the very foot of the throne, the 
author of their grievances. The duke of Buckingham was 
impeached (Feb. 21). 

The duke was one of those men who seem born to shine in 
courts, and to displease nations. Handsome, presumptuous, 
magnificent, frivolous, but daring, sincere and warm in his 
attachments, open and haughty in his hatreds, alike incapable 
of virtue or hypocrisy, he governed without political design, 
troubling himself neither about the interests of the country, 
nor even those of power, wholly occupied with his own great- 
ness and with exhibiting, in dazzling display, his co-royalty. 
On one occasion he had endeavored to render himself popular, 
and had succeeded : the rupture of the intended marriage of 
Charles with the infanta was his work. But public favor 
was, with him, only a means of obtaining ascendency over 
the king, so that when public favor quitted him, he scarcely 
observed its loss, so full of proud joy was he at retaining over 
Charles the influence he had insolently exercised over James I. 
He had no talent whereby to support his ambition ; frivolous 
passions were the sole aim of his intrigues ; to seduce a woman, 
to ruin a rival, he compromised with arrogant carelessness, 
now the king, now the country. The empire of such a man 
seemed to a people becoming, day by day, more grave and 
serious, an insult as well as a calamity ; and the duke con- 
tinned to usurp the highest offices of the state,* without appear- 
ing, even in the eyes of the populace, anything better than an 
upstart without glory — a daring and incapable favorite. 

The attack of the commons was violent : it was difficult to 
prove against Buckingham any legal crime ; the house re- 
solved (Apr. 22), that public report alone was sufficient 

* He was duke, marquis, and earl of Buckingham, earl of Coventry, 
viscount Villiers, baron of Whaddon, lord high admiral of England and 
Ireland, governor-general of the seas and navy, master of the horse, 
lieutenant-general-admiral, commander-in-chief, warden of the cinque 
ports, governor of Dover castle, keeper of the royal forests south of 
Trent, lord high keeper, high stew^ard of Westminster, constable of 
Windsor castle, gentleman of the bedchamber, knight of the garter, 
privy councillor, &c. The royal domains he had managed to have 
given him were valued at 284,395/., &c. — Brodie, Hist, of the British 
Empire, &c., ii., 122. 



40 HISTORY OF THE 



ground on which to proceed ; and it collected together all the 
leading charges adduced by general rumor.* The duke 
repelled them — most of them, at all events — satisfactorily, 
but without any advantage to himself. It was misgovernment 
that the commons wished to reform. Innocent of theft, mur- 
der, or treason, Buckingham was not less pernicious. The 
boldness of the commons gave courage to court enmities. 
The earl of Bristol, in March, 1626, complained of not having 
been summoned to parliament. j" Buckingham, who feared, 
wished to keep him at a distance. The lords acknowledged 
the earl's right, and Charles sent him a summons, but accom- 
panied it with an oi'der to remain on his estates. The earl 
appealed a second time to the house of lords, beseeching them 
to examine whether the liberties of all the peers of the realm 
did not require that he should come and take his seat. The 
king immediately impeached him of high treason (May 1).:}: 
In self-defence, Bristol, in his turn, impeached Buckingham ;§ 
and Charles saw his favorite pursued at once by the I'epresen- 
tatives of the people and by an old courtier. 

It was a step at once endangering his power, and deeply 
offensive to his pride. They had not been able to convict 
Buckingham of any crime : this blow, then, was aimed at his 
minister and his friend. He said to the commons : " I must 
let you know, that I will not allow any of my servants to be 
questioned amongst you, much less such as are of eminent 
place and near unto me. The old question was, ' What shall 
be done to the man whom the king will honor V But now it 
hath been the labor of some to seek what may be done against 
him whom the king thinks fit to honor. I see you specially 
aim at the duke of Buckingham ; I wonder what hath so 
altered your affections towards him. I do well remember, 
that in the last parliament, in my father's time, when he was 
the instrument to break the treaties, all of you (and yet I 
cannot say all, for I know some of you are changed, but yet 
the house of commons is always the same) did so much honor 
and respect him, that all the honor conferred on him was too 
little ; and what he hath done since to alter and change 
your minds, I wot not ; but can assure you he hath not med- 
dled, or done anything concerning the public or commonwealth, 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 32. f lb-, 72. f II)., 79. § lb., 86. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 41 

but by special directions and appointment, and as my servant ; 
and is so far from gaining or improving his estate thereby, 
that I verily think he hath rather impaired the same. I wish 
you would hasten my supply, or else it will be worse for. 
yourselves ; for if any ill happen, I think I shall be the last 
that shall feel it."* At the same time, he forbade the judges 
to answer the questions which the upper house had submitted 
to them upon a point in the earl of Bristol's']" case, fearing 
their answer would be in that nobleman's favor. 

The judges were silent ; but the commons did not desist. 
Eight of its members were appointed to support, in a confer- 
ence with the upper house, the impeachment of Buckingham 
(May 3).:}: As soon as the conference was over, the king caused 
two of the commissioners, sir Dudley Digges and sir John Eliot, 
to be sent to the Tower for insolence of speech^ (May 11). 
The incensed commons declared they would do nothing till 
these gentlemen were set at liberty. || In vain the friends of 
the court sought to frighten them as to the fate of parliament 
itself IT (May 13) ; their threats only appeared an insult, and 
they were fain to offer to the house an apology for having in- 
sinuated that the king might very likely be tempted to govern 
alone, like the princes on the continent. The two prisoners 
speedily quitted the Tower. 

On its part, the lords demanded also that lord Arundel, 
whom the king had caused to be arrested during the sitting 
of Parliament, should be set at liberty, and Charles here, in 
like manner, gave way** (June 8). 

Wearied of seeing himself defeated by adversaries whom he 
had himself called together and could disperse, after trying the 
effect of various overtures of civility which were always receiv- 
ed with great delight, but which, meaning nothing, prevented 
nothing, hearing that the commons were preparing a general 
remonstrance, Charles resolved to relieve himself from a position 
that humiliated him in the eyes of Europe and in his own. A 
rumor went abroad that Parliament was about to be dis- 
solved. The upper house, which began to seek popular 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 49. t Ibid., 106. 

f Journals, Commons. They were, sir Dudley Digges, Mr. Herbert, 
Mr. Selden, Mr. Glanville, Mr. Pym, Mr. Whitby, Mr. Wandesford, 
and sir John Eliot. 

§ P. Hist, ii., 103. II lb., 119. IT lb., 120. ** lb., 132. 

4* 



42 HISTORY OF THE 



favor, hastened to address a petition to the king to dissuade 
him from this design ; and all the peers accompanied the com- 
mittee charged with its presentation. " No, not a minute !" 
exclaimed Charles. The dissolution was immediately de- 
clared* (June 15), and a royal proclamation explained the 
reasons for it. The projected remonstrance of the commons 
was publicly burnt, and whoever possessed a copy of it, was 
ordered to burn it also.f Lord Arundel was placed under 
arrest in his own house, Bristol in the Tower ;:{: the duke of 
Buckingham thought himself saved, and Charles felt himself 
a king. 

His joy was as short as his foresight : absolute power has 
also its necessities. Engaged in a ruinous war against Spain 
and Austria, Charles had not at his disposal an army which 
he could employ in conquering at the same time his enemies 
and his subjects. Few and badly disciplined, his troops were 
exceedingly expensive ; puritanism reigned in the navy ; he 
dared not trust the militia, far more under the influence of 
the citizens and country gentlemen than the king. He had 
removed adversaries, but not embarrassments and obstacles ; 
and the insane pride of Buckingham now created new troubles. 
To avenge himself on the cardinal de Richelieu, who had 
prevented him from returning to Paris, to follow up his daring 
success with Anne of Austria, he induced his master to enter 
into a war with France. The interests of protestantism served 
as a pretext ; it was essential to save Rochelle, then under 
siege, or the French protestants would be lost. It was hoped 
that, for this cause, the people would passionately arm them- 
selves ; or, at least, would suffer themselves to be oppressed 
without resistance. 

A general loan was ordered, of the same amount as the 
subsidies which parliament had promised, but not voted. The 
commissioners were enjoined to interrogate the refractory as 
to the grounds of their refusal, to learn who had persuaded 
them, by what arguments, with what design. This was at 
once an attack upon property and an inquisition into opinion. 
Several regiments were spread over different counties, and 
quartered upon the inhabitants. The seaports and maritime 
districts received orders to furnish vessels armed and equipped, 

* P. Hist, ii., 193 \ lb., 207. | lb., 193. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 43 



the first attempt at ship-money. Twenty were demanded from 
the city of London ; the corporation replied, that to repel the 
armada of Philip II., queen Elizabeth had required fewer: the 
answer to this was, that " the precedents in former times were 
obedience and not direction."* 

To justify this language, the doctrine of passive obedience 
was ordered to be everywhere preached up. The archbishop 
of Canterbury, George Abbot, a popular prelate, refused to 
license the sale in his diocese of a sermon (by Dr. Sibthorp) 
in support of absolute power ; he was suspended, and relegated 
to Canterbury. -j- 

It soon appeared that too much had been presumed on the 
passions of the people ; they did not permit themselves to be 
persuaded to forget their liberty for the sake of their creed. 
Besides, they distrusted the sincerity of this new zeal ; leave 
them free, let a parliament be called, they would lend their 
reformed brethren on the continent much more solid aid. 
Many citizens refused to contribute to the loan ; some, obscure 
and powerless, were pressed into the fleet or army ; others 
were cast into prison, or charged with distant missions which 
they were not in a position to reject. Discontent, though as 
yet not breaking out into sedition, did not confine itself to 
murmurs only. Five gentlemen, detained in custody by an 
order in council, claimed of the court of king's bench, as the 
inherent right of every Englishman, to be discharged on bail.ij: 
An imperious king and an irritated nation alike pressed the 
case on to judgment. The king required of the judges to 
declare, as a principle, that no man arrested by his orders 
should be admitted to bail ; the people demanded to know 
whether all security was withheld from the defenders of their 
liberties ? The court of justice rejected the application (Nov. 
28, 1627), and sent the parties back to prison ; but without 
laying down the general principle the king desired : already, 
struck with a double fear, the magistrates dared not show 
themselves either servile or just ; and, to obviate as they best 

* Whitelocke, Memorial of English Affairs (London, 1682), p. 7. 

fib., p. 8. 

j Their names were, sir Thomas Darnel, sir John Corbet, sir Walter 
Earl, sir John Heveningham, and sir Ed%vard Hampden (Rushworth, 
Historical Collections, London, 1659 ; i., 458). This last must not be 
mistaken for his cousin, John Hampden, afterwards so celebrated. 



44 HISTORY OF THE 



might the dilemma, they refused to despotism their consent, 
to liberty their aid. 

In their jealous ardor to maintain all their rights, the people 
took under their protection even the soldiers who served as the 
instruments of tyranny. In every direction, complaints were 
raised of the excesses of these men : to repress them, martial 
law was enforced. The people took it ill that so arbitrary a 
power should be exercised without the sanction of parliament, 
and that Englishmen, soldiers or otherwise, whether employed 
in persecuting or in protecting their fellow-citizens, should be 
deprived of the security of the law. 

In the midst of this irritation, as yet impotent, but more and 
more aggressive, news came that the expedition sent to the 
succor of Rochelle, and which Buckingham commanded in 
person, had failed (Oct. 28). The unskilfulness of the general 
had caused this failure ; he had neither been able to take the 
isle of Re, nor to re-embark without losing the best of his 
troops, officers and soldiers. It was long since England had 
paid so dear for so much disgrace.* In country and town, a 
multitude of families, beloved and respected by the people, 
were in mourning. The indignation was universal. The 
laborer left his fields, the apprentice his shop, to see whether 
his employer, gentleman or citizen, had not lost a brother, or 
son ; and returned, cursing Buckingham, and accusing the 
king, to relate to his neighbors the disasters he had heard 
described, the general sorrow he had witnessed. Losses of 
another kind came to embitter men's minds ; the enemy's 
navy harassed and interrupted English commerce ; its 
vessels remained in port ; the unemployed sailors talked over 
the reverses of the royal navy, and the causes of their own 
inaction. From day to day, the gentry, the citizens, the 
populace, became more closely united in one common resent- 
ment. 

Buckingham, on his return, notwithstanding his arrogance, 
felt the weight of public hatred and the necessity of saving 
himself from it ; besides which, some expedient must be found, 
to remove these embarrassments, to procure money. In the 
way of tyrannical force, all that could be done or thought of 

* The disaster is painted with a great deal of energy in a letter from 
HoUis to sir Thomas Wentworth, of the 19th of November, 1627. 
Strafford's Letters and Despatches (London, 1739), i., 44. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 45 

had been exhausted. Sir Robert Cotton, as the mildest of 
the popular party, was called in to council the king. He 
spoke with wisdom and frankness, insisted on the just griev- 
ances of the nation, on the necessity of redressing them in 
order to obtain its support, and recalled the words of Lord 
Burleigh to queen Elizabeth : " Win their hearts, and you 
may have their hands and purses."* He advised the calling 
a fresh parliament, and to reconcile the duke of Buckingham 
with the public, it was agreed, that in the council where this 
resolution should be officially adopted, its proposition should 
proceed from him. The king acceded to sir Robert's sug- 
gestion. 

The prisons were thrown open ;f men who had been cast 
into them for their resistance to tyranny were suddenly re- 
leased — insulted yesterday, powerful to-day. The public 
received them with transport; twenty-seven of them were 
elected. Parliament met (March 17, 1628). " Every man," 
said the king, at the opening of the session, " must now do ac- 
cording to his conscience, wherefore if you (which God forbid) 
should not do your duties in contributing what the state at this 
time needs, I must, in discharge of my conscience, use those 
other means, which God hath put into my hands, to save that 
which the follies of some particular men may otherwise hazard 
to lose. Take not this as a threatening (for I scorn to threaten 
any but my equals), but an admonition froin him that, both 
out of nature and duty, hath most care of your preservation 
and prosperities.":]: The lord-keeper speaking after the king, 
added : " This mode (of supply), as his majesty hath told you, 
he hath chosen, not as the only way, but as the fittest ; not as 
destitute of others, but as most agreeable to the goodness of his 
own most gracious disposition, and to the desire and weal of 
his people. If this be deferred, necessity and the sword of the 
enemy will make way to the others. Remember his majesty's 
admonition ; I say, remember it."§ 

Thus Charles sought by his language to disguise his situa- 
tion : a haughty solicitor, sinking under the weight of his faults 
and failures, he made a threatening display of independent 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 212. 

t Seventy-eight prisoners were at that time released. Rushworth, 
i.,473. 

X Pari. Hist., ii., 21S. § lb. 221. 



46 HISTORY OF THE 



majesty, absolute, superior to all faults, all reverses. He was 
so infatuated with this idea, that it never entered into his con- 
ception, that his state was liable to injury ; and full of genuine 
pride, he thought it due to his honor, to his rank, to reserve to 
himself the rights, and not to depart from the language of 
tyranny, even while appealing for the aid of liberty. 

The commons were not at all disturbed at his threats ; 
thoughts no less proud, no less inflexible than his own, filled 
their souls. They were resolved solemnly to proclaim their 
liberties, to compel power to acknowledge them original and 
independent, no longer to suffer that any right should pass for 
a concession, any abuse for a right. Neither leaders nor 
soldiers were wanting for this great design. The whole nation 
pressed round the parliament. Within its walls, talented and 
daring men advised together for the national good. Sir Ed- 
ward Coke, the glory of the Bench, no less illustrious for his 
firmness than for his learning* sir Thomas Wentworth,-j- 
afterwards earl of Strafford, young, ardent, eloquent, born to 
command, and whose ambition was then satisfied with the ad- 
miration of his country ; Denzil HoUis,:}: the younger son of 
lord Clare, companion in childhood of Charles, but the sincere 
friend of liberty, and too proud to serve under a favorite ; Pym, 
a learned lawyer, especially versed in the knowledge of the 
rights and customs of parliament,§ a cool and daring man, of 
a character fitted to act as the cautious leader of popular pas- 
sions, with many others, destined at a future period, of which 
none of them had the slightest idea, for such various fortunes, 
to be the adherents of such utterly opposed parties, yet now 
united by common principles and common aspirations. To this 
formidable coalition the court could only oppose the power of 
habit, the capricious temerity of Buckingham, and the haughty 
obstinacy of the king. 

The first intercourse of the prince and the parliament was 
friendly. Notwithstanding his menacing attitude, Charles felt 
that he must give way ; and, while determined to regain all 
their rights, the commons had the full intention of showing 
their devotedness to him. Charles was not offended by their 

* Born at Mileham, Norfolk, 1549 ; he was then 78 years of age. 
t Born in London, April 13, 1593 ; he was then 35 years of age. 
X Born in 1597, at Houghton, Nottinghamshire ; he was then 31 
years old. 

§ Born in 15S4, in Somersetshire ; he was then 44 years old. 



ENGLISH EEVOLXJTION. 47 

freedom of speech ; and the speeches were as loyal as they 
were free. " I humbly beseech this house," said sir B. Rud- 
yard* (March 22), " to be curiously wary and careful to avoid 
all manner of contestation, personal or real. The hearts of 
kings are great, as are their fortunes ; then are they fitted to 
yield when they are yielded unto. It is comely and mannerly 
that princes, in all fair appearance, should have the better of 
their subjects. Let us give the king a way to come off like 
himself; for I do verily believe, that he doth with longing ex- 
pect the occasion. The way to show we are the wise coun- 
cillors we should be, is to take a right course to attain the end 
of our councils, which, in my opinion, may by this means be 
compassed ; by trusting the king, thereby to breed a trust in 
him towards us." All were not equally animated by these 
peaceful ideas ; there were some sterner minds, which antici- 
pated less fearful evils from a fresh rupture, and better appre- 
ciated the incurable nature of absolute power. All, however, 
showed themselves animated with the same wishes ; and the 
house, taking into consideratk)n, on equal terms, the grievances 
of the people and the wants of the throne, after a fortnight's 
session, unanimously voted (April 14) a considerable subsidy, 
but without passing the vote into a law. 

Charles's joy was extreme ; he forthwith assembled the 
council, and informing it of the vote of the house : " I liked 
parliaments, at first," said he, " yet since, I know not how, I 
have grown to a distaste of them ; but now I am where I was 
before ; I love them, and shall rejoice to meet with my people 
often. This day I have gained more reputation in Christen- 
dom than if I had won many battles." The same joy was 
displayed by the council ; Buckingham thought he must, as 
well as Charles, emphatically express his gratification ; he 
felicitated the king on so happy a concord with Parliament. 
" This," said he, "is not a gift of five subsidies alone, but the 
opening of a mine of subsidies, that lieth in their hearts. And 
now to open my heart and to ease my grief, please you to par- 
don me a word more : I must confess I have long lived in pain ; 
sleep hath given me no rest — favors, fortunes no content, such 
have been my secret sorrows, to be thought the man of sepa- 
ration, that divided the king from his people, and them from 

• Pari. Hist, ii.,235. 



48 HISTORY OF THE 



him ; but I hope it shall appear they were some mistaken 
minds that would have made me the evil spirit that walketh 
between a good master and loyal people, by ill offices * where- 
as, by your majesty's favor, I shall ever endeavor to prove 
myself a good spirit, breathing nothing but the best services to 
them all."* 

The secretary of state, Cooke, reported (April 7) to the house 
the king's satisfaction, and the favor that in all things he was 
ready to show to parliament. The commons congratulated 
themselves on this ; but Cooke, with the short-sighted meanness 
of a courtier, also spoke of the duke of Buckingham, and his 
speech in the council : the house was offended. " Is it that any 
man," said sir John Eliot, " conceives the mention of others, of 
what quality soever, can add encouragement or affection to us 
in our duties and loyalties towards his Majesty, or give them 
greater latitude or extent than naturally they have ; or is it to 
be supposed that the power or interest of any man can add 
more readiness to his majesty than this gracious inclination 
towards us gives him 1 I cannot believe it. I shall readily 
commend, nay, thank that man, whose endeavors are applied 
to such offices as may be advantageable for the public ; yet, 
in this manner, so contrary to the customs of our fathers, and 
the honor of our times, as I cannot without scandal, apprehend 
it, so I cannot, without some character of exception, pass it ; 
and therefore I desire that such interposition may be let alone. 
Now let us proceed to those services that concern him, which, 
I doubt not, in the end, will render us so real unto him, that 
we shall need no other help to endear us to his favor. "f 

This just pride appeared to Charles insolence, to Bucking- 
ham a clear symptom of new perils ; but neither the one nor 
the other said anything on the subject, and the house pui'sued 
its work. 

It had entered into a conference with the upper house to de- 
termine in concert the just rights of subjects, and to claim a 
new and solemn sanction of them from the princ.e (April 3). 
Charles, informed of the designs which the commissioners of 
the commons manifested in these conferences, took great um- 
brage. He had the house exhorted to hasten the definitive 
vote of the subsidies, and his minister added:]: (April 12), "1 

* Pari. Hist,, ii., 274. t lb., 275. J lb., 278. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 49 



must with some grief tell you, that notice is taken, as if this 
house press, not only upon the abuses of power, but upon power 
itself: this toucheth the king, and us who are supported by 
that power. Let the king hear of any abuses of power, he 
will willingly hear us ; and let us not bend oursel'ves against 
the extension of his royal power, but contain ourselves within 
those bounds, that we meddle only with pressures and abuses 
of power, and we shall have the best satisfaction that ever 
king gave." 

On their part, the peers, servile or timid, persuaded the 
commons to content themselves with requiring from the king 
a declaration, to the effect, that the great charter, with the 
statutes confirming it, were in full force, that the liberties of 
the English people also were in force, as in times past, and 
that the king would make use of the prerogatives inherent in 
his sovereign power, only for the benefit of his subjects 
(April 23).* 

The king assembled both houses in a solemn sitting, de- 
clared that he regarded the great charter as inviolate, the 
ancient statutes as inviolable, and called upon them to rely, 
for the maintenance of their rights, on his royal word, in which, 
he said, they would find more security than any new law 
could give them (April 28). f 

The commons did not allow themselves to be either intimi- 
dated or seduced ; the recent abuses had braved the power, 
altogether surpassing the foresight of the old laws ; there 
must be new, explicit guarantees, invested with the sanction 
of the whole parliament. It was doing nothing to have 
vaguely renewed promises, so often broken, statutes so long 
forgotten. Without wasting m.any words about the matter, 
respectful, but inflexible, the house drew up the famous bill, 
known under the name of the ' Petition of Rights,' adopted 
it, and transmitted it to the upper house for its assent 
(May 8). 

The lords had nothing to say against a bill which conse- 
crated acknowledged liberties, or repressed abuses universally 
condemned. But the king returned to the charge, again de- 
manding that they should rely on his word, and offering to 
confirm, by a new bill, the great charter and the ancient 

• Pari. Hist., ii., 329. t lb., 33? 

5 



50 HISTORY OF THE 



statutes ; addressing advice upon advice to the peers, to the 
commons message upon message; deeply irritated, but cautious 
and mild in his speech, proclaiming his firm resolution neither 
to suffer any restriction in any of his rights, nor to abuse 
those which he enjoyed. 

The perplexity of the peers was great. How secure the 
liberties of the people, without depriving the king of absolute 
power 1 for such was the question. They tried an amend- 
ment : the bill was adopted with this addition : " We humbly 
present this petition to your majesty, not only with a care of 
preserving our own liberties, but with due regard to leave 
entire that sovereign power wherewith your majesty is trusted 
for the protection, safety, and happiness of your people " 
(May 17).* 

When the bill thus amended came back to the commons : 
" Let us look unto the records," said Mr. Alford, " and see 
what they are : what is ' sovereign power V Bodin saith, that 
it is free from any conditions. By this we shall acknowledge 
a regal as well as a legal power ; let us give that to the king 
the law gives him, and no more." " I am not able," said Pym, 
" to speak to this question, for I know not what it is. All our 
petition is for the laws of England ; and this power seems to be 
another distinct power from the power of the law, I know 
how to add ' sovereign ' to the king's person, but not to his 
power ; and we cannot leave to him a ' sovereign power,' for 
we never were possessed of it." " If we do admit of this 
addition," said Sir Thomas Wentworth, " we shall leave the 
subject worse than we found him. Our laws are not ac- 
qainted with ' sovereign power' " (May 17). f 

The commons kept their ground ; the public becam.e more 
and more pressing ; the peers, not bold enough to demand 
liberty openly, were not bold enough either to sanction 
tyranny. They withdrew their amendment out of regard 
for them ; an unmeaning phrase was substituted for it, and 
the petition of rights, adopted by both houses, was solemnly 
presented to the king, who, conquered himself, at last promised 
to receive it (May 28). 

His answer (June 2) was vague, evasive ;+ he did not 
sanction the bill, and only repeated what the house had re» 
fuse4 to be content with. 

♦ Pari. Hii3t., ii., 355. f lb. $ lb., 374. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 51 

Victory seemed gliding away from the commons ; on meet- 
ing next day, they renewed the attack (June 3).* Sir John 
Eliot passionately recapitulated all the national grievances ; the 
usher had orders to remain at the door, to see that no member 
went out, under pain of being sent to the Tower. It was re- 
solved that a general remonstrance should be presented to the 
king ; the committee of subsidies was" charged with the draw- 
ing it up. 

At this point, fear came over some of the members, that 
legitimate fear which arises at the prospect of mighty convul- 
sion, and without asking who is in the right, or what is to be 
done, calls out to pause, when its party begins to rush forward 
with what it deems precipitate passion. Sir John Eliot was 
charged with being actuated by personal enmity ; sir Thomas 
Wentworth, with imprudence ; sir Edward Coke, they said, 
had always been obstinate and intractable. f The king thought 
this state of things might give him a respite, if not the means 
of fully recovering his ground. He forbade the house hence- 
forth to meddle with afiairs of state (June 5)4 

The whole house was in a consternation ; this was too 
much, an insult in the opinion of even the most moderate. 
All were silent : " Our sins are so exceeding great," at 
length said sir John Eliot, "that unless we speedily 
turn to God, God will remove himself further from us ; ye 
know with what affection and integrity we have proceeded 
hitherto to have gained his majesty's heart ! I doubt a mis- 
representation to his majesty hath drawn this mark of his 
displeasure upon us. It is said also, as if we cast some asper- 
sions on his majesty's ministers ; I am confident no minister, 
how dear soever, can " 

At these words, the speaker suddenly rose from his chair, 
and said, with tears in his eyes, " There is a command laid 
upon me to interrupt any that should go about to lay an 
aspersion on the ministers of state." Upon this sir John sat 
down. 

Sir Dudley Digges said, " Unless we may speak of these 
things in parliament, let us arise and be gone, or stit still and 
do nothing." Hereupon there was a deep silence in the house, 
which was broken by 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 3S0. t lb., 385. I lb., 401. 



52 HISTORY OF THE 



Sir Nathaniel Rich; "We must now speak, or for ever 
hold our peace," said he ; " for us to be silent when king and 
kingdom are in this calamity is not fit. The question is, 
shall we secure ourselves by silence ; yea or nay ? I know it 
is more for our own security, but it is not for the security of 
those whom we serve. Let us think on them : some instru- 
ments desire a change ; we fear his majesty's safety and the 
safety of the kingdom. Shall Ave sit still and do nothing, 
and so be scattered. Let us go to the lords and show our 
dangers, that we may then go to the king together, with our 
representations thereof." 

Suddenly the house passed from stupor to rage. All 
the members rose, all spoke at once, amidst utter confusion. 
" The king," said Mr. Kirton, " is as good a prince as ever 
reigned ; it is the enemies to the commonwealth that have 
so prevailed with him ; therefore let us aim now to discover 
them ; and I doubt not but God will send us hearts, hands, 
and swords, to cut all his and our enemies' throats." — " It is 
not the king," answered old Coke, " but the duke (a great 
cry of, " 'Tis he, 'tis he ! " was shouted on all sides) that 
saith, ' We require you not to meddle with state government, 
or the ministers thereof.' "* The speaker had left his chair ; 
disorder increased, and no one attempted to calm it, for the 
most prudent men had nothing to say : anger is sometimes 
legitimate, even in the eyes of those who never get into a 
passion themselves. 

While the house, a prey to this tumult, was meditating 
the most violent resolutions, the speaker went out secretly, 
and hastened to inform the king of his imminent peril. f 
Fear passed from the house to the court. The next day a 
milder message was sent, in explanation of the one which had 
caused such irritation ::}: but words were not enough. The 
commons remained much agitated ; they discussed the sub- 
ject of the German troops, already levied by Buckingham, 
and who were shortly to disembark ; one member affirmed 
that, the evening before, twelve German officers had arrived 
in London, and that two English vessels had received orders 
to bring over the soldiers. § The subsidies were still in 
suspense. Charles and his favorite feared longer to brave 

* Pari. Hist., ii.,403. f lb. % lb., 406. § lb., 408. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 53 

an opposition daily more powerful. They made no doubt 
that the full sanction of the petition of rights would suffice to 
calm everything. The king went to the house of lords, 
where the commons were also assembled (7 June). They 
had been mistaken, he said, in supposing that in his first 
answer there was any by-view, and he was ready to give one 
that would dissipate all suspicion. The petition was read 
anew, and Charles answered by the usual form — " Soit fait 
droit comme il est desire." 

The commons returned triumphant ; they had at last 
achieved the solemn acknowledgment of the liberties of the 
English people. To .this all publicity must be given ; it 
was resolved that the petition of rights, printed with the 
king's last answer, should be diffused all over the country, 
and enrolled, not only in both houses, but also in the courts 
of Westminster. The bill of subsidies was definitively 
adopted. Charles thought his trials were over : " I have done 
my part," said he ; " wherefore if this parliament hath not a 
happy conclusion, the sin is yours ; I am free of it."* 

But an old evil is not so soon cured, and the ambition of 
an irritated nation is not appeased with a first success. The 
passing of the bill of rights was evidently not sufficient. The 
reform of principles only was accomplished ; this was nothing 
without reform in practice ; and to secure this, there must be 
a reform of the king's council. Now Buckingham still kept 
his position, and the king continued to levy the customs duties 
without the sanction of parliament. Enlightened by experi- 
ence as to the danger of delay, blinded by passion as to that 
of too abrupt and too harsh demands, pride and hatred com- 
bining with the instinct of necessity, the commons resolved to 
deal without delay the last blows. In a week two new re- 
monstrances were drawn up, one against the duke, the other 
to establish that tonnage and poundage, like other taxes, might 
only be levied by law (13 and 21 June).']" 

The king lost all patience, and, resolved to give himself at 
least some respite, he went to the house of lords, had the com- 
mons summoned, and prorogued the parliament (June 26). 

Two months afterwards, the duke of Buckingham was 
murdered (Aug. 23). Sewn up in the hat of Felton, his as- 

*Parl. Hist., ii., 409. jlh., 420, 431. 

5* 



54 HISTORY OF THE 



sassin, was found a paper, in which the last remonstrance 
of the house was referred to.* Felton did not fly, or 
defend himself; he merely said that he regai'ded the duke as 
the enemy of the kingdom, shook his head when spoken to 
about accomplices, and died with composure, confessing, how- 
ever, that he had done wrong. f 

Charles was greatly disturbed at the murder, and indignant 
at the joy which the multitude manifested at it. Upon the 
close of the session, he had endeavored to gratify the public 
feeling, by restraining the preachers of passive obedience, and 
especially by severities against the papists, the scape-goats of 
every reconciliation between the prince and the country. 
The assassination of Buckingham, in which the people saw 
their deliverance, threw the king back into tyranny. He re- 
stored his favor to the adversaries of parliament : Dr. Mon- 
tague, whom the commons had prosecuted, was promoted to 
the bishopric of Chichester ; Dr. Mainwaring, whom the 
house of lords had condemned, received a rich benefice ; 
bishop Laud,:j; already famous for passionate devotion to the 
principle of high power in king and church, passed to the 
see of London. The king's public conduct corresponded with 
these court favors : tonnage and poundage were levied with 
rigor ; and the irregular tribunals continued to suspend the 
course of law. Returned thus noiselessly to the path of 
despotism, Charles had now somewhat more prospect of suc- 
cess than before : he had detached from the popular party 
the most brilliant of its leaders, the most eloquent of its 
orators. Sir Thomas Wentworth, created a baron, entered 
the privy council, despite the reproaches, nay, the threats, of 
his former friends : " I shall meet you in Westminster Hall," 
said Pym to him, bidding him adieu at their last friendly 
interview ; but Wentworth, ambitious and haughty, dashed 
passionately on towards greatness, far from foreseeing how 
odious, how fatal, he would one day be to liberty. Other de- 
fections followed his ;§ and Charles, surrounded with new 
councillors, more staid, more able, less decried than Buck- 
ingham, saw without apprehension the approach of the second 
session of parliament (20 Jan., 1629). 

* Appendix No. II. f Clarendon, i., 53 ; State Trials, iii., 371. 
t Born at Readins;, 1573. He was at this time bishop of Bath and 
Wells. 

§ Sir Dudley Digges, Sir Edw. Lyttleton, Noy, Wandesford, &c 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 56 

The commons had scarcely assembled before they proceed- 
ed to ascertain what effect had been given to the bill of rights 
(21 Jan.). They learned that instead of the king's second 
answer, it was the first, the evasive and rejected one, which 
had been added to it. Norton, the king's printer, owned that 
the very day after the prorogation, he had received orders 
thus to alter the legal text, and to suppress all the copies 
which contained the true answer^ that of which Charles had 
boasted, when he said, " I have done my part ; I am free of 
it." 

The commons sent for the papers, verified the fact of the 
alteration, and said no more about it, as if ashamed to expose 
too publicly so gross a violation of faith : but their silence did 
not promise oblivion.* 

All the attacks were renewed against the toleration of pa- 
pists, the favor granted to false doctrines, the depravation of 
morals, the ill distribution of dignities and employments, the 
proceedings of the irregular courts, the contempt of the liber- 
ties of subjects.'!" 

So great was the excitement of the house, that one day it 
listened in silence and with favor to a man new to them, badly 
dressed, of a common appearance, who, addressing them for 
the first time, denounced, in furious and very indifferent lan- 
guage, the indulgence of a bishop to some obscure preacher, 
a rank papist, as he called him. This man was Oliver Crom- 
well:]: (Feb. 11). 

Charles essayed in vain to wrest from the commons the con- 
cession of the tonnage and poundage duties, the only object for 
which he had assembled them. He employed new threats, 
new persuasions, admitting, that he held these taxes, like all 
others, of the pure gift of his people, and that to parliament 
alone it belonged to establish them, but insisted, at the same 
time, that they should be granted him for the whole of his 
reign, as they had been to most of his predecessors. § The 
commons were inflexible ; this was the only weapon of de- 
fence against absolute power which remained to them. With 
one excuse after another they persevered in delay, and daily 
set forth their grievances, but without any exact aim, without 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 435. t lb., 438, 466, 473. 

J lb., 464 : Memoirs of Warwick, 247. § Pari. Hist., ii., 442. 



56 HISTORY OF THE 



putting forward, as in the preceding session, any clear and 
precise propositions, for they were all this time a prey to vio- 
lent but vague agitations, disturbed with the sensation of an 
evil they knew not how to cure. The king grew impatient ; 
they refused his demand without proffering any of their own, 
without laying any application before him, which he might 
reject or sanction ; it had, he felt, an air of pure malevolence, 
of being a mere plan for impeding his government. Mention 
was made that he intended to prorogue parliament. Sir John 
Eliot at once (March 2) proposed a new remonstrance against 
the levying of the duties in dispute. The speaker, alleging 
an order from the king, refused to put the motion to the vote. 
The house insisted : he left the chair. HoUis, Valentine, and 
other members, forced him back to it, despite the efforts of the 
court party, who endeavored to rescue him from their hands. 
" God's wounds," said Hollis, " you shall sit till it please the 
house to rise." " I will not say I will not," cried the speaker, 
" but I dare not." But passion was now without curb ; they 
compelled him to resume his seat. The king, informed of the 
tumult, sent orders to the serjeant-at-arms to withdraw with 
the mace, which, by custom, would suspend all deliberation : 
the Serjeant was kept in his chair like the speaker, the keys 
of the hall were taken from him, and a member, sir Miles 
Hobart, took charge of them. The king sent a second mes- 
senger to announce the dissolution of parliament ; he found 
the doors locked on the inside, and could not gain admittance. 
Charles, in a paroxysm of fury, sent for the captain of his 
guards, and oi'dered him to go and force the doors. But, in 
the interval, the commons had retired, after having carried a 
resolution which declared the levying of tonnage and pound- 
age illegal, and those guilty of high treason who should levy 
or even pay them.* 

All accommodation was impossible : the .king went to the 
house of lords, 10th March. " I never came here," said he, 
" on so unpleasing an occasion, it being for the dissolution of 
parliament ; the disobedient carriage of the lower house had 
alone caused this dissolution. Yet they would mistake me 
wonderfully that think I lay the fault equally upon all the 
lower house ; for, as I know, there are many as dutiful and 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 4S7— 491. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 57 

loyal subjects as any are in the world, so I know it is only 
some vipers amongst them that have cast this mist of dif- 
ference before their eyes. As those evil affected persons must 
look for their reward, so you that are here of the higher 
house, may justly claim from me that protection and favor 
that a good king oweth to his loyal and faithful nobility."* 
The dissolution was pronounced. Immediately afterwards, 
appeared a proclamation, setting forth : " That whereas, for 
several ill ends, the calling again of a parliament is divulged, 
howsoever his majesty hath showed, by his frequent meeting 
with his people, his love to the use of parliaments ; yet this 
late abuse having, for the present, driven his majesty unwil- 
lingly out of that course, it will be considered presumption for 
any one to prescribe to him any time for the calling of that 
assembly, "f 

Charles kept his word, and now only occupied himself with 
the project of governing alone. 

* Pari. Hist, 492. t Ibid., 525. 



58 HISTORY OF THE 



BOOK THE SECOND. 

1629—1640. 

Intentions of the king and his council — Prosecution of the leading 
members of Parliament — Apparent apathy of the country — Struggle 
of the ministry and court — The queen — Strafford — Laud — Want 
of cohesion in, and discredit of government — Civil and religious 
tyranny — Its effects on the different classes of the nation — Trial of 
Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick— Of Hampden — Insurrection of Scot- 
land — First war with the Scots — Peace of Berwick — Short parlia- 
ment of 1640 — Second war with Scotland — Its bad success — Convo- 
cation of the long parliament. 

Nothing is so dangerous as to take a system of government 
as it were on trial, with the idea that one may at any time 
resort to another. Charles had committed this fault. He 
had attempted to govern in concert with the parliament ; but 
with the full persuasion, however, as he frequently intimated, 
that if parliament was too troublesome he should be able' to 
do perfectly well without it. He entered upon the career of 
despotism with the same heedlessness, proclaiming his inten- 
tion to adhere to it, but fully believing that, after all, if neces- 
sity became too strong for him, he could at any time have 
recourse to parliament. 

His most able councillors were of the same opinion. Neither 
Charles nor any about him had, at this time, conceived the 
design of abolishing for ever the ancient laws of England, 
the great national council. Short-sighted rather than enter- 
prising, insolent rather than absolutely ill-intentioned, their 
words, and even their acts, were more daring than their 
thoughts. The king, they said, had shown himself just and 
kind towards his people ; he had yielded a great deal, granted 
a great deal. But nothing would satisfy the commons ; they 
required the king to become their dependent, their ward ; this 
he could not do, without ceasing to be king. When the prince 
and parliament could not manage to agree, it was for the par- 
liament to give way ; for the prince alone was sovereign. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 59 

Since the commons would not give way, he must perforce 
govern without them ; the necessity was evident ; sooner or 
later the people would understand this, and then, parliament 
having become wiser, there v/ould be nothing to prevent the 
king's recalling it, in case of need. 

With still less foresight than the council, the court only 
saw in the dissolution a deliverance from difficulty. While 
the house of commons was sitting, the courtiers were by no 
means at ease ; none of them dared to push boldly their for- 
tune, nor enjoy their credit freely. The embarrassments of 
power impeded the intrigues, and spread a gloom over 
the festivities of Whitehall. The king was thoughtful, the 
queen intimidated. Pai-liament dissolved, this uneasiness and 
restraint disappeared ; frivolous grandeur reassumed its bril- 
liancy, and private ambition its full swing. The court asked 
for nothing beyond this ; and troubled itself in no degree to 
inquire whether, in the prosecution of its immediate object, 
it was not aiding to bring about a change in the government 
of the country. 

The people judged otherwise : the dissolution was, in their 
eyes, a sure symptom of a deep-laid scheme, of a resolution 
to destroy parliaments. The commons had no sooner sepa- 
rated, than, at Hampton Court, Whitehall, wherever the 
court assembled, the papists, secret or avowed, the preachers 
and adherents of absolute power, the men of intrigue and 
pleasure, indifferent to all creeds, congratulated one another 
on their triumph ; whilst in the Tower, and the principal 
gaols of London and the provinces, the defenders of the pub- 
lic rights, treated at once with contempt and rigor, were under- 
going imprisonment, were under impeachment for what they 
had said or done in the inviolable sanctuary of parliament.* 
They claimed their privileges, they demanded to be discharged 
upon bail, and the judges hesitated what to answer, but the 
king communicated with the judgesf (Sept., 1629), and the 
application of the prisoners was refused. Their courage did 
not fail them in this trial : the greater number refused to own 
themselves guilty of any wi'ong, or to pay the fines to which 

* The members arrested were, Denzel Holies, Sir Miles Hobart, Sir 
John Eliot, Sir Peter Hayman, John Selden, William Coriton, Walter 
Long, William Stroud, and Benjamin Valentine.— State Trials, iii., 235 

t Pari. Hist, ii., 31S, et seq. 



60 ■ HISTORY OF THE 



they were condemned. They preferred remaining in prison. 
Sir John Eliot was destined to die there. 

While this prosecution was going on, public anger continu- 
ally increased, and did not hesitate openly to manifest itself. It 
was a sort of continuation of the parliament, vanquished and 
dispersed, but still struggling before the judges of the country, 
through the voice of its leaders. The firmness of the accused 
kept up the ardor of the people, who constantly saw them 
pass and repass from the Tower to Westminster, and accom- 
panied them with their acclamations and their prayers. The 
visible anxiety of the judges afforded some expectation. " All 
is lost !" was the cry ; yet still the public continued to alter- 
nate between hope and fear, as in the midst of the battle. 

But this great trial ended. Frightened or seduced, some 
of the accused paid the fine, and, ordered to live at least ten 
miles from the royal residence, retired to conceal their weak- 
ness in their respective counties. The noble steadfastness of 
thei rest was buried in the depth of their dungeons. The 
people, who saw and heard no more of them, were themselves 
no longer seen nor heard. Power, not meeting with open 
opposition, thought the day all its own, and that the nation, 
from which it had estranged itself, was prostrate beyond re- 
covery. Charles hastened to conclude peace with France 
(April 11, 1629), and Spain (Nov. 5, 1630), and found him- 
self at last without rivals at home, without enemies abroad. 

For some time, government was an easy matter enough. 
The citizens for awhile took heed only to their private in- 
tet"ests : no discussion, no warm excitement agitated the 
gentry m their county meetings, the burghers in their town- 
halls, the sailors in the ports, the apprentices in their shops. 
It was not that the nation was languishing in apathy, but its 
activity had taken another direction ; it seemed to have for- 
gotten in labor the defeat of liberty. Less ardent than haughty, 
the despotism of Charles interfered with it very slightly in 
this new state ; the prince meditated no vast designs, he had 
no uneasy desire for extended and hazardous glory ; he was 
content to enjoy with dignity his power and his rank. Peace 
dispensed him from exacting from his subjects heavy sacri- 
fices ; and the people gave itself up to agriculture, to com- 
merce, to study, and no ambitious and restless tyranny inter-, 
posed to impede its efforts, or compromise its interests. Public 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 61 

prosperity accordingly rapidly advanced, order reigned, and 
this regular and flourishing condition gave to power the appear- 
ance of wisdom, to the country that of resignation.* 

It was around the throne and among its servants that the 
troubles of government recommenced. As soon as the 
struggle between the k'ng and the people appeared at an 
end, two parties disputed which should influence the reno- 
vated despotism ; the queen and the ministry, the court and 
the council. 

On her arrival in England, the queen had not disguised the 
dulness she experienced in her new country. Religion, insti- 
tutions, customs, language, everything displeased her ; she had 
even, just after their union, treated her husband with puerile 
insolence, and Charles, out of all patience with her passionate 
outbursts of humor, found himself, on one occasion, driven 
abruptly 1« send back to the continent some of the attendants 
whom she had brought over with her (July, 1626). The 
pleasure of reigning could alone console her for her exile from 
France ; and she reckoned upon the full enjoyment of this 
satisfaction from the time she ceased to have the awe of par- 
liament before her eyes. Agreeable and lively in her 
manners, she soon acquired over a young king of highly pure 
principles, an ascendency which he admitted with a sort of 
gratitude, sensibly touched, as it were, by her consenting to 
enjoy herself at all in his society. But the happiness of a 
domestic life, dear to the serious mind of Charles, could not 
satisfy the frivolous, restless, and hard character of Henrietta 
Maria ; she wanted an acknowledged, insolent empire — an 
empire of display, an empire which should be cognizant of all 
things, and without whose permission nothing should be said or 
done ; she wanted, in short, power, as power always presents 
itself to the mind of an arrogant, unthinking woman. Round 
her rallied, on the one hand, the papists, on the other, the frivo- 
lously ambitious, the petty intriguers, the young courtiers, 
who had early gone to Paris to learn the secret of pleasing 
her. All these professed to her alone to look, the one class 
for fortune, the other for the triumph, or at all events, the 
deliverance of their faith. It was in her apartments that the 
leading papists at home, and the emissaries of Rome, discussed 

* Clarendon, i., 126. 
6 



62 HISTORY OF THE 



their most secret hopes ; it was there her favorites displayed 
the notions, manners, and fashions of the continent.* Every- 
thing there vras foreign, and offensive to the creed and customs 
of the country ; there every day were put forward projects 
and pretensions that could only be realized by illegal measures 
or abused favors. The queen took part in these intrigues, 
assured the plotters of success, claimed sanction for them of 
the king ; nay, required of him that, in order to honor her, as 
she said, in the eyes of the people, he should consult her on 
all occasions, and do nothing without her consent. If the 
king refused her wishes, she would angrily accuse him, that 
he neither loved her nor knew how to reign. And then 
Charles, happy to find her solicitous for his power, or as to his 
love, had no other thought than to dissipate her grief or her 
anger. 

The most servile councillors would scarcely have- submitted 
without resistance to this capricious sway. Charles had two 
who were deficient neither in mind nor spirit, and who, though 
devoted to his cause, desired to serve him otherwise than 
according to the fancies of a woman or the pretensions of a 
court. 

In forsaking his party to attach himself to the king, Straf- 
fordf had not been called upon to sacrifice any very fixed 
prmciples, or basely to betray his conscience. Ambitious and 
ardent, he had been a patriot out of hatred to Buckingham, 
out of a desire for glory, to display in full lustre his talents 
and his energy of mind, rather than from any righteous or 
profound conviction. To act, to rise, to govern, was his aim, 
or rather the necessity of his nature. Entering the service of 
the crown, he became as earnest in its cause as he theretofore 
had been in that of liberty, but it was as a grave, proud, able, 
unbending minister, not as a frivolous and obsequious courtier. 
Of a mind too vast to shut itself up in the paltry circle of 
domestic intrigues, of a pride too hotheaded to give way to 
court forms and notions, he passionately devoted himself to 
business, braving all rivalry, breaking down all resistance ; 
eager to extend and strengthen the royal authority, now 

* May's History of the Long Parliament. (London, 1647.) Book i., 
21, 

t He was at this period called lord Wentworth — not being created 
earl of Strafford till the 12th of January, 1640, 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 63 

become his own, but diligent at the same time to re-establish 
order and repress abuses, to put down private interests he 
judged illegal, and promote all such general interests as he 
deemed not dangerous to royalty. A fiery despot, still all 
love of country, all desire for its prosperity, for its glory, was 
not extinct in his heart, and he perfectly comprehended upon 
what conditions, by what means, absolute power must be 
bought over. An administration arbitrary but powerful, 
consistent, laborious, holding in scorn the rights of the people, 
but occupying itself with the public happiness, despising all 
petty abuses, all minor misgovernment, making subordinate to 
its will, and to its views, the great equally with the small, the 
court as well as the nation — this was his aim, this the character 
of his rule, and which he strove to impress on the government 
of the king. 

The friend of Strafford, archbishop Laud, with less worldly 
passions, and a more disinterested ardor, brought into the 
council the same feelings, the same designs. Austere in his 
conduct, simple in his life, power, whether he served it or 
himself wielded it, inspired in his mind a fanatical devotion. 
To pi'escribe and to punish, this was in his eyes to establish 
order, and order ever seemed to him justice. His 'activity 
was indefatigable, but narrow in its views, violent, and harsh. 
Alike incapable of conciliating opposing interests, and of re- 
specting rights, he rushed, with head down and eyes closed, 
at once against liberties and abuses ; opposing to the latter 
his rigid probity, to the former his furious hate, he was as 
abrupt and uncompromising with the courtiers as with the 
citizens ; seeking no man's friendship, anticipating and able 
to bear no resistance, persuaded, in short, that power is all- 
sufficient in pure hands ; and constantly the prey of some 
fixed idea, which ruled him with all the violence of passion, 
and all the authority of duty. 

Such councillors suited the new situation of Charles. 
Standing apart from the court, they were less anxious to please 
it, than to serve their master ; and had neither the pompous 
insolence, nor the idle pretensions of the favorites. They 
were persevering, laborious, bold, capable, devoted. The 
government of Ireland had scarcely passed into the hands of 
Strafford, ere that kingdom, which had till then been only a 
trouble and expense to the crown, became a source of riches 



64 HISTORY OF THE 



and strength. Its public debt was paid ; the revenue, previ- 
ously collected without system, and squandered without shame, 
was regularly administered, and soon rose above the expendi- 
ture ; the nobles were no longer allowed to oppress the people 
with impunity, or the aristocratic and religious factions to tear 
each other to pieces, in full liberty, as theretofore. The 
army, which Strafford found weak, without clothes, without 
discipline, was recruited, well disciplined, well paid, and 
ceased to pillage the inhabitants. Favored by order, com- 
merce flourished, manufactories were established, agriculture 
advanced. In short, Ireland was governed arbitrarily, harshly, 
often even with odious violence ; but yet, to the interest of 
general civilisation and royal power, instead of being as for- 
merly, a prey to the greedy extortion of revenue officers, high 
and low, and to the domination of a selfish and ignorant aris- 
tocracy.* 

Invested in England, as to civil afTairs, with a less extended 
and less concentrated authority than that of Strafford in Ire- 
land, and less able than his friend, Laud did not fail to pursue 
the same line of conduct. As commissioner of the treasury, 
he not only repressed all pilferings and illegitimate expendi- 
ture, but applied himself to the thorough understanding of the 
various branches of the public revenue, ana to the finding out 
by what means its collection could be rendered less onerous 
to the subject. Vexatious impediments, grave abuses, had 
been introduced into the administration of. the custom duties, 
for the profit of private interests ; Laud listened to the com- 
plaints and representations of merchants, employed his leisure 
in conversing with them, informed himself by degrees as to 
the general interests of commerce, and freed it from trammels 
which had materially injured it, without any advantage to the 
exchequer. In March, 1636, the office of high treasurer was 
given, on his recommendation, to Juxon, bishop of London, a 
laborious, moderate-minded man, who put an end to number- 
less disorders which had alike been injurious to the crown 
and to the citizens. To serve, as he fancied, the king and the 
church, Laud was capable of oppressing the people, of giving 
the most iniquitous advice ; but where neither king nor church 
was in question, he aimed at good, at truth, and upheld them 



See Appendix, III. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. 65 

without feai' as to himself, without the slightest consideration 
for other inte'-ests. 

If, on the one hand, this administration, upright, diligent, 
but arbitrary, tyrannical, on occasions, and refusing all re- 
sponsioility, was too little for the country ; on the other, it 
was a great deal too much for the court. Favorites may 
succeed there ; if they meet with enemies, they also make 
partisans, and in this conflict of personal interests a skilful 
intriguer may successfully oppose those he serves to those 
whom he offends. Such had been Buckingham. But who- 
ever would govern, whether by despotism or by the laws, in 
the general interest of king or people, must lay his account 
to have the hatred of all the courtiers ; and accordingly it arose 
among them against Strafford and Laud, quite as intense, and 
infinitely more manoeuvring, than among the people. On 
Strafford's first appearance at Whitehall, a general sneer 
curled every lip, at the sudden elevation and somewhat un- 
polished manners of the country gentleman, who had been 
more especially heard of as a parliamentary opponent of the 
court.* The austere manners, the theological pedantry, and 
the bluntness of Laud, were equally disliked there. Both 
these men were haughty, inattentive, and by no means affable 
in their manners ; they disdained intrigues, connselled econo- 
my, and talked of business and necessities which a court does 
not like to hear about. The queen conceived an aversion for 
them, for they impeded her influence with the king ; the high 
aristocracy took offence at their power ; and ere long the 
whole court united with the people to attack them, joining 
vigorously in outcries against their tyranny. 

Charles did not forsake them ; he had full confidence in 
their devotedness and ability ; their opinions were quite in 
unison with his own,i^nd he entertained for the profound piety 
of Laud a respect blended with affection. But in retaining 
them in his service, despite the court, he was not in a .condi- 
tion to make the court submit to their government. Grave in 
his deportment and sentiments, his mind was not of sufficient 
depth or grasp to comprehend the difficulties of absolute power, 
and the necessity of sacrificing everything to it. Such were, 

* Howell's Letters, 1650, Letter 34; Strafford's Letters, i.,79; Bio- 
graphia Britannica, in vita. 

6* 



66 HISTORY OF THE 



in his eyes, the rights of royalty, that it seemed to him nothing 
ought to cost him an efTort. In the council, he applied him- 
self, regularly and with attention, to public affairs ; but this 
duty fulfilled, he troubled himself very little about them ; and 
the necessity of governing was infinitely less present to his 
thoughts than the pleasure of reigning. The good or bad 
temper of the queen, the usages of the court, the prerogatives 
of the officers of the palace, appeared to him important con- 
siderations, which the political interests of his crown could 
not require him to forget. Hence arose, for his ministers, 
petty but continual annoyances and difficulties, which the 
king left them to.the full endurance of, thinicing he did enough 
for them and for himself b)^ retaining them in their offices. 
They were charged to exercise absolutism, yet the power to 
do so failed them the moment they called for some domestic 
sacrifice, some measure contrary to the forms and rules of 
Whitehall. All the time of his administration in Ireland, 
Strafford was constantly called upon for explanations and 
apologies ; now, he had spoken lightly of the queen, and now 
again, some influential family had complained of his hauteur ; 
he had to justify his words, his manners, his character ; all 
these idle accusations obliged him to reply, from Dublin, to 
something that had been said, some rumor that was afloat 
about him in the palace ; and he did not always obtain an as- 
surance in return, which (setting him at ease as to these minor 
perils) enabled him to carry on without fear the authority yet 
left him.* 

Thus, notwithstanding the energy and zeal of his principal 
councillors, notwithstanding the tranquil state of the country, 
notwithstanding the private worth of the king's conduct, and 
the proud bearing of his language, the government was with- 
out strength and without consideration. Assailed by domestic 
dissensions, carried away alternately by opposing influences, 
sometimes arrogantly shaking off the yoke of the laws, some- 
times giving way before the slightest difficulties, it proceeded 
without any settled plan ; it forgot, at every turn, its own de- 
signs. It had abandoned, on the continent, the cause of pro- 
testantism, and had even forbidden lord Scudamore, its ambas- 
sador at Paris, to attend divine service in the chapel of the 

' Strafford's Letters, i., 128, 138, 142, 144 ; ii., 42, 105, 126, &c. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 67 

reformers, because the forms did not come near enough to the 
rites of the English church.* And yet it allowed the marquis 
of Hamilton to raise in Scotland a body of six thousand men, 
and to go and fight at their head (1631) under the banners of 
Gustavus AdolphuSjf not foreseeing he would there imbibe 
the principles and creed of the very puritans whom the 
church of England proscribed. Charles's faith in the re- 
formed religion, such as Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had made 
it, was sincere ; and yet, whether from tenderness to his wife, 
or from a spirit of moderation and justice, or from an instinct 
of what suited absolute power, he often granted to the ca- 
tholics, not only a liberty at that time illegal, but almost 
avowed favor. ij: Archbishop Laud, as sincere as his master, 
wrote against the court of Rome, even preached strongly 
against the worship conducted in the queen's chapel, yet at 
the same time he showed himself so favorable to the system 
of the Romish church, that the pope thought himself author- 
ized to offer him a cardinal's hat (Aug., 1633).:]: In the 
conduct of civil affairs, there reigned the same indecision, the 
same inconsistency. No broad, clear plan was perceptible ; 
no powerful hand made itself uniformly felt. Despotism was 
pompously displayed, and, on occasion, exercised with rigor ; 
but to give it a fixed basis, required too many efforts, too much 
perseverance ; it came, by degrees, to be left quite out of 
mind, so that its abstract pretensions daily more and more ex- 
ceeded its means. The treasury was administered with order 
and probity ; the king was not wasteful ; yet the want of 
money was just as great as could have been brought about by 
the grossest prodigality on the part of the prince, and the 
worst peculation on the part of his officers ; in the same way 
that Charles had haughtily refused to yield to parliament, to 
obtain from it an income sufficient for his expenses, he now 
thought he should lower himself, by reducing his expenses to 
a level with his income. § Splendor about the throne, court 

* Neal's History of the Puritans, 1822 ; ii., 234. 

t Clarendon, i., 254. | Laud's Diary, p. 49 ; Whitelocke's, 18. 

§ The pensions, which, under the reign of Elizabeth, were 18,000/., 
rose, under James I., to 80,000Z. ; and, in 1626, a little more than a 
year after the accession of Charles I., they already amounted to 
120,000/. The expenses of the king's household, in the same interval, 
had increased from 45,006/. to 80,000/. ; that of the wardrobe had 
doubled ; that of the privy purse, tripled, &c. — Rushworth, i., 207. 



68 HISTORY OF THE 



festivals, the old customs of the crown, were in his eyes con- 
ditions, rights, almost duties of royalty ; sometimes he was 
Ignorant of the abuses put in practice to provide for these, and 
when he did know, he had not the courage to reform them. 
Thus, though relieved by peace from all extraordinary expen- 
diture, he found himself unable to meet the wants of his go- 
vernment. English commerce was prospering ; the mercan- 
tile marine, daily growing more numerous and more active, 
solicited the protection of the royal navy. Charles confi- 
dently promised it, and even made, from time to time, serious 
efforts to keep his word ;* but, as a general rule, the merchant 
fleets were without convoy, for the king's vessels wanted rig- 
ging, and the sailors were unpaid. The pirates of Barbary 
came to the British channel, to the very straits of Dover ; they 
infested the shores of Great Britain, landed, pillaged the vil- 
lages, and carried off" thousands of captives (1637). Captain 
Rainsborough, who was at length sent to the coast of Morocco 
to destroy one of their haunts, found there three hundred and 
seventy slaves, English and Irish ; and such was the weakness 
or the improvidence of the administration, that Strafford was 
obliged to arm a ship at his own expense to preserve the very 
port of Dublin from the ravages of these pirates. f 

So much incapacity, and its inevitable perils, did not escape 
the observation of experienced men. The foreign ministers 
who resided in London wrote word of it to their masters ; and 
soon, notwithstanding the known prosperity of England, it 
became a common topic on the continent that the government 
of Charles was feeble, imprudent, insecure. At Paris, at 
Madrid, at the Hague, his ambassadors were more than once 
treated slightingly — nay, with contempt.:]: Strafford, Laud, 

* Warwick's Memoirs ; Rusliworth, i., 2, 257, &c. 

t Strafford's Letters, i., 68; ii., 86, &c. ; Waller's Poems (1730), 
271. 

J The writings of the time, among others the letters collected by 
Howell, present a thousand examples of this : I shall only cite one. 
When Sir Thomas Edmonds went to France, in 1629, to conclude the 
treaty of peace, the gentleman sent to meet him to St. Denis, and pre- 
side at his entrance, said to him, with a sneer, " Your Excellency will 
not be astonished I have so few gentlemen with me, to pay you honor 
and accompany you to court ; there were so many killed in the isle of 
Re;" a bitter "allusion to the tei-rible defeat of the English at that 
island, under the orders of the Dulie of Buckingham. — Howell's Let- 
ters (1705), 210. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 69 

and some others of the council, were not ignorant of the evil, 
and sought some remedy for it. Strafford, especially, the 
boldest as well as the most able, struggled passionately against 
all obstacles ; he became anxious for the future, and would 
have had the king, governing his affairs with diligence and 
foresight, assure to himself a fixed revenue, well-stored arse- 
nals, fortified places, and an army.* He, for his own part, 
had not hesitated to assemble the Irish parliament (1634), and, 
either through the fear he inspired, or the services he had 
rendered the country, he had made it the most docile as well 
as the most useful instrument of his power. But Charles for- 
bad him to call it again ;■!■ the queen and he dreaded the very 
name of parliament, and the fears of his master did not per- 
mit Strafford to give to tyranny the forms and support of the 
law. He urged the point for a time, but without success, and 
at last submitted. Energetic himself, he underwent the yoke 
of weakness ; and his foresight was of no avail, for he spoke 
to the blind. Some of the council, who thought as he did, but 
were more selfish, or better aware of the futility of any 
efforts, withdrew, when, to support his views, a struggle was 
needed, leaving him alone with Laud, exposed to the intrigues 
and hatred of the court. 

Tyranny, thus frivolous and unskilful, daily needs some 
new tyranny to carry it on. That of Charles was, if not the 
most cruel, at least the most unjust, the most chargeable with 
abuse that England had ever endured. Without being able 
to allege in excuse any public necessity, without dazzling 
men's minds by anj^ great result, to satisfy obscure wants, to 
gratify fantastic and unmeaning whims, he set aside and out- 
raged ancient rights equally with the new-born wishes of the 
people, making no account either of the laws and opinions of 
the country, or of his own promises, essaying altogether hap- 
hazard, according to circumstances, every species of oppres- 
sion ; adopting, in short, the most rash resolutions, the most 
illegal measures, not to secure the triumph of a consistent and 
formidable -system, but to maintain by daily expedients a power 
ever in embarrassment. Subtle lawyers, set to work rum- 
maging among old records to discover a precedent for some 
forgotten iniquity, laboriously brought to light the abuses of 

* Strafford's Letters, ii., 61, 62, 66. t Ibid., i., 365. 



70 HISTORY OF THE 



past times, and erected them into rights of the throne. There- 
upon, other agents, not so learned, but more actively daring, 
converted these pretended rights into real and new vexations ; 
and if any appeal was made, servile judges were ready to 
declare that, in point of fact, the crown had of old possessed 
such prerogatives. Was the acquiescence of the judges at 
all matter of doubt — was it thought necessary not to put their 
influence too strongly to the test, the irregular tribunals, the 
star chamber, the council of the north,* and a number of other 
jurisdictions, independent of the common law, were chai'ged 
to take their place, and the aid of illegal magistrates was 
called in when the severity of legal magistrates did not suf- 
fice for the purposes of tyranny. Thus were re-established 
imposts long fallen into desuetude, and others invented till 
then unknown ; thus I'e-appeared those innumerable monopo- 
lies, introduced and abandoned by Elizabeth, recalled and 
abandoned by James I., constantly disallowed by parliament, 
and at one time abolished by Charles himself, and which, giving 
to contractors or to privileged courtiers the exclusive sale of 
almost all commodities, inflicted suffering upon the people, 
and irritated them still more by the unjust and most irregular 
subdivision of their profits."]" The extension of the royal fo- 
rests, that abuse which had often driven the barons of old in 
England to arms, became so great,that the forest of Rocking- 
ham alone was increased from six to sixty miles in circuit, 
while, at the same time, they hunted out, and punished by 
exorbitant fines,:]: the least encroachment on the part of the 

* Instituted by Henry VIII. at York, in 1537, after the troubles 
which broke out in the northern counties, in consequence of the sup- 
pression of the lesser monasteries, to administer justice and maintain 
order in these counties, independently of the courts at Westminster. 
The jurisdiction of the court, at first very limited, became more ex- 
tended and arbitrary under James I. and Charles I. 

t The following is a list, though an incomplete one, of the wares 
then made monopolies of: salt, soap, coals, iron, wine, leather, starch, 
feathers, cards and dice, beaver, lace, tobacco, barrels, beer, distilled 
liquors, the weighing of hay and straw in London and Westminster, 
red herrings, butter, potash, linen cloth, paper rags, hops, buttons, 
catgut, spectacles, combs, saltpetre, gunpowder, &c. 

X Lord Salisbury was condemned to be fined, on this ground, 
20,000Z. ; lord Westmoreland, 19,000/. ; sir Christopher Hatton, 
12,000/. ; lord Newport, 3000/, ; sir Lewis Watson, 4000/., &c, : Straf- 
ford's Letters, ii., 117 ; Pari. Hist., ii., 643. 



ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. 71 

subject. Commissioners went about the country questioning 
here the rights of the possessors of former domains of the 
crown, there the rate of emoluments attached to certain offices, 
elsewhere the right of citizens to build new houses, or that of 
agriculturists to change their arable land into pasture, and 
they proceeded, whenever they could make out a case at all, 
not to reform abuses, but to sell their continuation at a high 
price.* Privileges, irregularities of all kinds, were, between 
the king and those who made a business of them, a compact 
subject of disgraceful bargains. They even turned into a 
commodity the severity of the judges ; under the least pre- 
text, unheard-of fines were imposed, which, striking terror 
into those who apprehended a similar visitation, determined 
them to secure themselves beforehand by a handsome bribe. 
It really seemed as though the tribunals had no other business 
than to provide for the wants of the king, or to ruin the ad- 
versaries of his power.| If discontent in any particular 
county appeared too general for such proceedings to be easily 
practicable, the provincial militia was disarmed, and royal 
troops were sent thei'e, whom the inhabitants were bound, not 
only to board and lodge, but moreover to equip. For not 
paying that which they did not owe, men were put in prison ; 
they were released on paying a portion of the amount, more 
or less, according to their fortune, credit, or management. 
Imposts, imprisonments, judgments, rigors, or favors, every- 
thing was matter of arbitrary rule ; and arbitrary rule ex- 
tended itself daily more and more over the rich, because there 
was money to be got from them, over the poor, because they 
were not to be feared. At last, when complaints grew so loud 
that the court took alarm, the magistrates who had given cause 
for them purchased impunity in their turn. In an excess of 
insane despotism, for speaking a hw inconsiderate words, 
Strafford had caused lord Mountnorris to be condemned to 
death ; and, though the sentence had not been carried into 
effect, the mere statement of the prosecution had raised against 
the deputy in Ireland, in England, even in the king's council, 
loud reprobation. To appease it, Strafford sent to London six 

* May, i., 17 ; Rushworth, ii., 2, 915. 

t The sum total of the fines imposed during this epoch for the 
king's profit, amounted to more than six millions of money. See Ap- 
pendix IV. 



72 HISTORY OF THE 



thousand pounds, to be distributed among the principal coun- 
cillors. • I fell upon the right way," answered lord Cotting- 
ton, an eld and crafty courtier, to whom he had entrusted the 
affair, " which was to give the money to him that really could 
do the business, which was the king himself;" and Strafford 
obtained at this price, not only exemption from all conse- 
quences, but the permission to distribute, at his own pleasure 
among his favorites, the spoils of the man, whom, at his own 
pleasure, he had caused to be condemned.* 

Such was the effect of Charles's necessities : his fears car- 
ried him even much further than his necessities. Notwith- 
standing his haughty indifference, he at times felt his weak- 
ness, and sought for support. He made some attempts to 
restore to the higher aristocracy the strength it no longer en- 
joyed. Under the pretence of preventing prodigality, country 
gentlemen were ordered to live on their estates ; their influ- 
ence was feared in London. "j" The star-chamber took under 
its care the consideration due to the nobility. A want of re- 
spect, an inadvertency, a joke, the least action which seemed 
not to keep in just recognition the superiority of their rank 
and of their rights, was punished with extreme rigor, and 
always by enormous fines for the benefit of the king and 
the ofTended party.:]: The aim was to make the court 
people powerful and respected ; but these attempts were not 
followed up, either because their futility was soon ascertained, 
or because the history of the barons of old had the effect of 
inspiring the king with some distrust of their descendants. In 
point of fact, some of them were foremost in the ranks of the 
malcontents, and only these had any credit among the people 
at large. "The court still succeeded, on occasions, in humiliat- 
ing private gentlemen before the lords of the court ; but it 
became clearly necessary to seek elsewhere a body, who, 
already powerful in themselves, still stood in need of aid from 

* Strafford's Letters, i., f)!!. 

t More than two hundred gentlemen were proceeded against in one 
day (March 20, 1635), and by the same indictment, for having diso- 
beyed this injunction. Rushworth, i., 2, 288. 

t A person named Grenville was condemned to pay the king 4000/., 
and as much in damages to lord Suffolk, for having said of the latter 
that he was a base lord ; Pettager was fined 2000Z., and ordered to be 
flogged, for having used the same term in reference to the earl of 
Kingston. Rushworth, ii., 2. Append. 43, 72. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 73 

the crown, and might, by being admitted to a share of abso- 
lute power, contribute in return to its support. Fcr a long 
time past the English clergy had solicited this mission,; they 
were now called to fulfil it. 

Emanating in its origin from the sole will of the temporal 
sovereign, the Anglican church had, as has been seen, thence 
lost all independence ; it had no longer a divine mission, it 
subsisted no longer of its own right. Standing apart from the 
people, who did not elect them, separated from the pope and 
the universal church, formerly their support, the bishops and 
the superior clergy were mere delegates of the prince, his chief 
servants ; an altogether false position for a body charged to 
represent that which is most independent and elevated in the 
nature of man — faith. The English church had early per- 
ceived this defect in its constitution ; but its many perils, and 
fear of the strong hand of Henry VIII. and of Elizabeth, had 
prevented it from taking any steps to retrieve its position. 
Assailed at once by the catholics and the nonconformists, its 
possessions and its faith still alike precarious, it devoted itself 
unreservedly to the service of temporal power, acknowledging 
its own dependence, and admitting the absolute supremacy 
of the throne, which, at that time, could alone save it from its 
enemies. 

Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth, some few indi- 
cations manifested themselves, here and there, on the part of 
the Anglican clergy, of rather loftier pretensions. Dr. Ban- 
croft, chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury, maintained 
that episcopacy was not a human institution, that it had been, 
from the time of the apostles, the government of the church, 
and that bishops held their rights, not from the temporal 
sovereign, but from God alone.* This new clergy, in fact, 
had begun to think its power more firmly based, and took a 
first step towards independence ; but the attempt, ventured 
timidly, was haughtily repulsed. Elizabeth asserted the pleni- 
tude of her spiritual supremacy, emphatically repeating to the 
bishops that they were nothing but by her will ; and the arch- 
bishop of Canterbury contented himself with saying he wished 
the doctor was right, but he did not dare flatter himself he 
was.f The people energetically sided with the queen ; their 

* In a sermon, preached 12th Jan., 15S8. — Neal, i., 395. 
t Ibid., i., 397. 

7 



74 IIISTOEY OF THE 



only thought was to advance reform, and they perfectly well 
understood that if the bishops aspired to independence, if was 
not to free faith from temporal authority, but to oppress it on 
their own account. 

Nothing decisive was done under James I. ; selfish and cun- 
ning, he cared little about aggravating the evil, provided he 
kept clear of the peril. He maintained his supremacy, but 
granted so much favor to the bishops, took so much care to 
strengthen their pov/er, by harsh treatment of their enemies, 
that their confidence and strength daily augmented. Zealous 
in proclaiming the divine right of the throne, they soon began 
to speak of their own ; that which Bancroft had timidly in- 
sinuated, became an opinion openly avowed by all the upper 
clergy, supported in numerous writings, asserted from the very 
pulpit. Bancroft himself was created archbishop of Canter- 
bury (Dec, 1604). Every time that the king made a parade 
of his prerogative, the clergy bowed with respect ; but imme- 
diately after these acts of momentary humility, resumed their 
pretensions, putting them forvv-ard, more especially as against 
the people, the better to conciliate the king, devoting them- 
selves more and more to the cause of absolute monarchy, and 
looking forward to the day when they should be so necessary 
to it, that it would be compelled to acknowledge their indepen- 
dence to make sure of their aid. 

When Charles, having quarrelled with his parliament, stood 
alone in the midst of his kingdom, seeking on all sides the 
means of governing, the Anglican clergy believed this day 
was come. They had again got immense wealth, and enjoyed 
it without dispute. The papists no longer inspired them with 
alarm. The primate of the church, Laud, possessed the en- 
tire confidence of the king, and alone directed all ecclesiastical 
affairs. Among the other ministers, none professed, like lord 
Burleigh under Elizabeth, to fear and struggle against the en- 
croachments of the clergy. The courtiers were indifferent, 
or secret papists. Learned men threw lustre over the church. 
The universities, tiiat of Oxford more especially, were devoted 
to her maxims. Only one adversary remained — the people, 
each day more discontented with uncompleted reform, and 
more eager fully to accomplish it. But this adversary was 
also the adversary of the throne ; it claimed at the same time, 
the one to secure the other, evangelical faith and civil liberty. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 75 

The same peril threatened the sovereignty of the crown and 
of episcopacy. The king, sincerely pious, seemed disposed 
to believe that he was not the only one who held his authority 
from God, and that the power of the bishops was neither of 
less high origin, nor of less sacred character. Never had so 
many favorable circumstances seemed combined to enable the 
clergy to achieve independence of the crown, dominion over 
the people. 

Laud set himself to work with his accustomed vehemence. 
Fii'st it was essential that all dissensions in the bosom of the 
church itself should cease, and that the strictest uniformity 
should infuse strength into its doctrines, its discipline, its wor- 
ship. He applied himself to this task with the most unhesi- 
tating and unscrupulous resolution. Power was exclusively 
concentrated into the hands of the bishops. The court of hio-h 
commission, where they took cognizance of and decided every, 
thing relating to religious matters, became day "by day m.ore 
arbitrary, more harsh in its jurisdiction, its forms, and its 
penalties. The complete adoption of the Anglican canons, the 
minute observance of the liturgy, and the rites enforced in 
cathedrals, were rigorously exacted on the part of the whole 
ecclesiastical body. A great many livings were in the hands 
of nonconformists ; they were withdrawn from them. The 
people crowded to their sermons ; they were forbidden to 
preach.* Driven from their churches, deprived of their in- 
com.es, they travelled from town to town, teaching and preach- 
ing to the faithful who, in a tavei'n, private house, or field, 
would gather round them ; persecution followed and reached 
them evei'ywhere. In the country, noblemen, retired citizens, 
rich families devoted to their faith, received them into their 
homes as chaplains or as tutors for their children ; persecution 
penetrated even here, and drove forth the chosen chaplains and 
tutors. ■(■ These proscribed men quitted England ; they went 
to France, Holland, Germany, to found churches in accord- 
ance with their faith ; despotism pursued them beyond seas, 
and summoned these churches to conform to the Anglican 
rites. ij: French, Dutch, German mechanics had brought their 
industry into England, and obtained charters which assured to 
them the free exercise of their national religion ; these char- 

* Neal, ii., 179, etc. f Neal, ii., 179, etc. X lb., 205. 



76 HISTORY OF THE 



ters were withdrawn from them, and most of them abandoned 
their adopted country ; the diocese of Norwich alone lost three 
thousand of these hard-working foreigners.* Thus deprived 
of every asylum, of all employment, fugitives or concealed, 
the nonconformists still wrote in defence and in propagation of 
their doctrines ; the censor prohibited these new books, and 
sought out and suppressed the old.f It was even absolutely 
forbidden to touch, either in the pulpit or elsewhere, upon the 
questions with which men's minds were most agitated jij: for 
the controversy was general and profound, upon dogmas as 
upon discipline, on the mysteries of human destiny as on the 
proper forms of public worship ; and the Anglican church 
would neither tolerate departure from its ceremonies, nor ad- 
mit discussion of its opinions. The people grieved to hear no 
longer either the men they loved, or the topics that occupied 
their thoughts. To calm their alarms, to prevent being en- 
tirely separated from their flock, moderate or timid noncon- 
formist ministers offered partial submission, claiming in return 
some partial concessions, such as the not wearing a surplice, 
the not giving to the communion table the form or position of 
an altar, and so on. They were answered, either that the 
form in question was so important, that they must not depart 
from it, or that it .was so unimportant, as not to be worth their 
opposing it. Driven to extremity, they determinately resisted, 
and insult as well as condemnation awaited them in the eccle- 
siastical courts. The bishops and judges, and their officei's, 
thee-and-thoued them in the most insolent manner ; called 
them all sorts of fools, idiots, rascally knaves, and habitually 
ordered them to be silent the moment they opened their mouths 
to defend themselves, or explain anything. § Even if they re- 
nounced preaching, writing, or appearing in public at all, 
tyranny did not renounce its persecution ; its malevolence 
was characterized by an ingenuity, a tenacity of oppression, 
which no prudence on the part of the wretched men could 
foresee, no humility turn aside. Mr. Workman, a minister at 
Gloucester, had asserted that pictures and ornaments in 
churches were a relic of idolatry ; he was thrown into prison. 

* Rushworth, i., 2, 272 ; May, i., 83 ; Neal, ii., 232. 
t Decree of the star-chamber, July 11, 1637 ; Rushworth, ii., 2, ap* 
pendix, 306 ; Neal, ii., 165. t lb., ii., 163. 

§ Rushworth, i., 2, 233, 240; Neal, i., 256, in the note, p. 352. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 77 

A short time before, the town of Gloucester had made him a 
grant of twenty pounds a-year for life ; it was ordered to cease, 
and the mayor and municipal officers were prosecuted and 
fined a large sum for having made it. On quitting his prison, 
Workman opened a little school ; Laud ordered it to be closed. 
To earn a living, the poor minister turned doctor ; Laud in- 
terdicted his medicining as he had interdicted his teaching : 
hereupon Workman went mad, and soon after died.* 

Meantime, the pomp of catholic worship speedily took 
possession of the churches deprived of their pastors ; while 
persecution kept away the faithful, magnificence adorned the 
walls. They were consecrated amid great display,"]" and it 
was then necessary to employ force to collect a congregation. 
Laud was fond of prescribing minutely the details of new 
ceremonies — sometimes borrowed fsom Rome, sometimes the 
production of his own imagination, at once ostentatious and 
austere. On the part of the nonconformists, every innova- 
tion, the least derogation from the canons or the liturgy, was 
punished as a crime ; yet Laud innovated without consulting 
anybody, looking to nothing beyond the king's consent, and 
sometimes acting entirely upon his own authority.:]: He altered 
the interior arrangement of churches, the forms of worship, 
imperiously prescribed practices till then unknown, even altered 
the liturgy which parliament had sanctioned ; and all these 
changes had, if not the aim, at all events the result of render- 
ing the Anglican church more and more like that of Rome. 
The liberty the papists enjoyed, and the hopes they displayed, 
whether from imprudence or design, confirmed the people in 
their worst apprehensions. Books were published to prove 
that the doctrine of the English bishops might very well adapt 
itself to that of Rome ; and these books, thougn not regularly 
licensed, were dedicated to the king or to Laud, and openly 
tolerated. § Many theologians, friends of Laud, such as 
bishop Montague, Dr. Cosens, professed similar maxims, and 
professed them with entire impunity, while preachers whom 
the people loved, in vain exhausted compliance and courage 
to retain some right to preach and write. Accordingly, the 
belief in the speedy triumph of popery grew daily more 
strong, and the courtiers, who were nearer the scene of action, 

* Neal, iii., 204. f Ib.> 190. f lb., 220. § Whitelocke, p. 22. 



78 HISTORY OF THE 



fully shared this belief with the people. The duke of Devon- 
shire's daughter turned catholic ; Laud asked her what rea- 
sons had determined her to this ? " I hate to be in a crowd," 
said she ; " and as I perceive your grace and many others are 
hastening towards Rome, I want to get there comfortably by 
myself before you." 

The splendor and exclusive dominion of episcopacy thus 
established, at least so he flattered himself. Laud proceeded 
to secure its independence. One might have thought that in 
this desire he would have found the king less docile to his 
counsels ; but it was quite otherwise. The divine right of 
bishops became, in a short time, the official doctrine, not only 
of the upper clergy, but of the king himself. Dr. Hall, bishop 
of Exeter, set it forth in a treatise which Laud took care to 
revise, and from which he struck out every vague or timid 
sentence, every appearance of doubt or concession.* From 
books, this doctrine soon passed into acts. The bishops held 
their ecclesiastical courts no longer in the name and by virtue 
of delegation from the king, but in their own name ; the epis- 
copal seal alone was affixed to their acts ; it was declared that 
the superintendence of the universities belonged of right to the 
metropolitan. ■(• The supremacy of the prince was not formally 
abolished, but it might be said only to remain as a veil to the 
usurpations that were to destroy it. Thus throwing off, by 
degrees, all temporal restraint, on the one hand, the church, 
on the other, encroached upon civil affairs ; her jurisdiction 
extended itself to the expense of the ordinary tribunals, and 
never had so many ecclesiastics held seats in the king's 
council, or occupied the high offices of state. At times, the 
lawyers, finding their personal . interests threatened, rose 
against these encroachments ; but Charles gave no heed to 
them • and such was the confidence felt by Laud, that when 
he had caused the wand of high treasurer to be given to bishop 
Juxon, he exclaimed, in the transport of his joy, " Now let 
the church subsist and sustain her own power herself; — all is 
accomplished for her: I can do no more.":]: 

By the time things had come to this pass, the people were 
not alone in their anger. The high nobility, part of them at 
least, took the alarm. § They saw in the progress of the 

* Neal, ii., 292. t Ib-> 243 ; Whitelocke, ut sup. 

t Laud's Diary, under date of the 6th of March, 1636. §*Neal, ii., 250. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 79 

church far more than mere tyranny ; it was a regular revolu- 
tion, which, not satisfied with crushing popular reforms, dis- 
figured and endangered the first reformation ; that which 
kings had made and the aristocracy adopted. The latter had 
learned to proclaim the supremacy and divine right of the 
throne, which, at least, freed them from any other empire ; 
now they had severally to acknowledge the divine right of 
bishops, and to bow down, in their turn, before that church 
whose humiliation they had admiringly sanctioned, in whose 
spoils they had shared. From them was required servility, 
still more jealous of its prerogatives than liberty of its rights ; 
yet others, heretofore their inferiors,' were permitted to as- 
sume independence. They felt their rank, nay, perhaps their 
property, in danger. Haughtiness on the part of the clergy, 
was an annoyance to which they had now been long unac- 
customed ; they heard people say, that the day would soon 
come when a simple ecclesiastic would be as great a per- 
sonage as the proudest gentleman in the land ;* they saw the 
bishops or their creatures carry off well nigh all public offices, 
well nigh all the favors of the crown, the only compensation 
remaining to the nobles for the loss of their ancient splendor, 
their liberties, and their power. Charles, besides being sin- 
cere in his devotion to the clergy, promised himself in their 
exaltation a strong support against the ill-will of the people ; 
and, altogether, the disposition to censure the conduct and to 
suspect the designs of government, soon became universal ; 
discontent spread from the workshops of the city to the saloons 
of Whitehall. 

Among the higher classes, it manifested itself in a distaste 
for the court, and a freedom of mind hitherto unknown. 
Several of the higher nobility, the most esteemed by the 
country, retired to their estates, in order to show their disap- 
probation by their absence. In London and about the throne, 
the spirit of independence and investigation penetrated into 
assemblies before utterly servile or frivolous. Since the reign 
of Elizabeth, a taste for science and literature had no longer 
been the exclusive privilege of their professors ; the society of 
distinguished men, philosophers, scholars, poets, artists, and the 
pleasures of learned and literary conversation, had been sought 

* Neal, ii., 251. 



80 HISTORY OF THE 



by the court as a new source of display, in other quarters, as 
a noble pastime ; but no need of opposition mixed itself up with 
the spirit of these associations ; it was even the fashion, whether 
they were held in some famous tavern, or in the mansion of 
some lord, to ridicule the morose humor and fanatic resistance 
of the religious nonconformists, already known under the 
appellation of puritans. Fetes, plays, literary conversation, 
an agreeable interchange of flatteries and favors, were all that 
entered into the aim of a society, of which the throne was 
usually the centre and always the protector. It was no longer 
thus in the reign of Charles ; men of letters and men of the 
world continued to meet together ; but they discussed much 
graver questions, and discussed them apart from the observa- 
tion of power, which would have taken offence at them. Public 
alFairs, the moral sciences, religious problems, were the topics 
of their conversations, which were brilliant and animated, and 
eagerly sought by young men returned from their travels, or 
who were studying law in the Temple, and by all other men 
of a serious and active mind whose rank and fortune gave them 
the opportunity. Here Selden poured out the treasures of his 
erudition ; Chillingworth discoursed of his doubts on matters 
of faith ; lord Falkland, then quite young, threw open his 
house for their meetings, and his gardens were compared to 
those of the Academy.* There neither sects nor parties were 
formed, but free and vigorous opinions. Unshackled by sel- 
fish interests or projects, drawn together solely by the pleasure 
of exchanging ideas, and stimulating each other to generous 
sentiments, the men who took part in these meetings debated 
without constraint, and each sought only truth and justice. 
Some more particularly applying themselves to philosophical 
meditation, inquired what form of government most suited the 
dignity of man : others, lawyers by profession, allowed no 
illegal act of the king or his council to pass unnoticed ; others, 
theologians by calling or taste, narrowly investigated the first 
ages of Christianity, their creeds, their foi'ms of worship, and 
compared them with the church which Laud was essaying to 
establish. These men were not united by common passions 
and perils, nor by any definite principles or object ; but they 
all agreed and mutually excited each other to detest tyranny, 



* Clarendon's Memoirs (1827), i., 55. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. 81 

to despise the court, to regret the parliament, to desire, in 
short, a reform which they had slight hope of, but in which 
each, in the freedom of his thought, promised himself the termi- 
nation of his sorrows, the accomplishment of all his wishes. 

Further from court, with men of an inferior class and in- 
ferior refinement of mind, the feeling was of a severer cha- 
racter, and the ideas, though narrower, more determined. Here 
opinions were connected with interest, passions with opinions. 
With the gentry, it was more particularly against political 
tyranny that anger was directed. The decay of the higher 
aristocracy, and of the feudal system, had greatly weakened 
the distinctions of rank among the inferior classes : all gentle- 
men at this time regarded themselves as the descendants of 
those who had achieved Magna Charta ; and were indignant 
at seeing their rights, their persons, their possessions subject 
to the good will and pleasure of the king and his councillors, 
while their ancestors, as they constantly reminded one 
another, had of old made war upon the sovereign, and dic- 
tated laws. No philosophical theory, no learned distinction 
between democracy, aristocracy, and royalty, occupied them ; 
the house of commons alone filled their thoughts : that repre- 
sented, in their eyes, the nobles as well as the people, the 
ancient coalition of the barons as well as the nation at large : 
that alone had of late years defended public liberty, that alone 
was capable of regaining it ; that alone was thought of, when 
parliament was mentioned ; and the lawfulness as Avell as the 
necessity of its being all-powerful was an idea that by degrees 
established itself in every mind. With respect to the church, 
most of the gentry were, as to its form of government, with- 
out any particular view, and assuredly without any idea of 
destroying it. They had no hostility to episcopacy ; but the 
bishops were odious to them as the abettors and upholders of 
tyranny. The reformation had proclaimed the enfranchise- 
ment of civil society, and abolished the usurpations of spiritual 
power in temporal matters. The Anglican clergy sought to 
resume the power which Rome had lost : that this ambition 
might be repressed, that the pope should have no successors 
in England, that the bishops, keeping apart from the govern- 
ment of the state, should limit themselves to administering, 
according to the laws of the land, the affairs of religion in 
their respective dioceses, this was the general wish and feel- 



82 HISTORY OF THE 



ing of the country nobility and gentry, who were all well 
enough disposed to sanction an episcopal constitution, provided 
the church neither pretended to political power nor to divine 
right. 

In the towns, the better class of citizens, in the country, a 
large proportion of the lesser gentry, and almost all the free- 
holders, carried their views, extended their indignation, par- 
ticularly in religious matters, much further than this. With 
them predominated a passionate attachment to the cause of 
reform, an ardent desire to have its great principles thoroughly 
worked out, a profound hatred of everything that retained 
any semblance to popery, or recalled it to their memory. It 
was under the usurpations of the Roman hierarchy, said they, 
that the primitive church, the simplicity of its worship, the 
purity of its faith, were destroyed. Therefore was it, they 
went on, that the first church of reform, the new apostles, 
Zwinglius, Calvin, Knox, applied themselves promptly and 
vigorously to abolish this tyrannical constitution and its 
idolatrous pomps. The gospel had been their rule, the pri- 
mitive church their model. England alone persisted in walk- 
ing in the ways of popery : for was the yoke of the bishops 
less hard, their conduct more evangelical, their pride less 
arrogant than that of Rome ? Like Rome, they only thought 
of power and riches ; like Rome, they disliked frequent 
preaching, austerity of manners, freedom of prayer ; like 
Rome, they claimed to subject to immutable and minute 
forms the impulses of Christian souls ; like Rome, they sub- 
stituted, for the vivifying words of Christ, the worldly pa- 
geantry of their ceremonies. On the sacred day of the sabbath 
did true Christians desire to perform, in the retirement of 
their homes, their pious exercises ? in every square, in every 
street, the noise of games and dancing, the riots of drunken- 
ness, insultingly broke in upon their meditations. And the 
bishops were not satisfied with permitting these profane pas- 
times : they recommended — nay, almost commanded them, 
lest the people should acquire a taste for more holy pleasures.* 
Was there in their flock a man whose timorous conscience 
felt wounded by some usages of the church ? they imperiously 
imposed upon him the observance of its minutest laws ; if 

* Neal, ii., 212 ; Rushworth, i., 2, 191. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 83 

they saw another attached to the laws, they tormented him 
with their innovations ; they crushed the humble ; the high- 
souled, they irritated to revolt. On all sides were main- 
tained the maxims, usages, and pretensions of the enemies of 
the true faith. And why this abandonment of the gospel ? 
this oppression of the most zealous Christian ? To maintain 
a power which the gospel conferred on no one, which the 
first believers had never known. It was desired that episco- 
pacy should be abolished, that the church, becoming once 
more itself, its own, should be henceforth governed by minis- 
ters equal among themselves, simple preachers of the gospel, 
and regulating in concert, in common deliberation, the disci- 
pline of the Christian people ; this would be indeed the church 
of Christ ; then there would no longer be idolatry, or tyranny ; 
and the reformation, at last accomplished, would no longer 
have to fear popery, even now at the door, ready to invade 
the house of God, which its keepers seem getting ready for 
the reception of the enemy.* 

When the people, among whom, from the first rise of the 
reformation, these ideas had been obscurely fermenting, saw 
them adopted by a number of rich, eminent, and influential 
men, their own direct and natural supporters, they acquired a 
confidence in them and in themselves, which, though it did 
not then break out into sedition, soon changed the whole 
condition and aspect of the country. Already in 1582 and 
1616, a few nonconformists, formally separating from the 
church of England, had formed, under the name, afterwards 
so celebrated, of Brownists and Independents, little dissenting 
sects, who rejected all general government of the church, and 
proclaimed the right of every congregation of the faithful to 
regulate its own worship upon purely republican principles. f 
From that epoch, some private congregations had been esta- 
blished on this model, but they were few in number, poor, 
and almost all as strange to the nation as to the church. Ex- 
posed, without the means of defence, to persecution as soon as 
it had ferreted them out, the sectaries fled, and generally re- 
tired to Holland. But- soon love for their country struggled 
in their hearts, with the desire for liberty ; to conciliate both, 
they sent messages to the friends whom they had left behind, 

• Rushworth, i., 3, 172. t Neal, i., 301 ; ii., 43, 92. 



84 HISTORY OF THE 



concerting with them to go together in search of a new 
country, in some scarcely known region, but which at least 
belonged to England and where English people only were to 
be found. The more wealthy sold their property, bought a 
small vessel, provisions, implements of husbandry, and, under 
the charge of a minister of their faith, went to join their 
friends in Holland, thence to proceed together to North Ame- 
rica, where some efforts at colonization were then making. 
It seldom happened that the vessel was large enough to take 
all the passengers who wished to go ; on such occasions, all 
being assembled on the sea side, at the place off which the 
ship lay at anchor, there, on the beach, the minister of that 
part of the congregation which was to remain behind, preached 
a farewell sermon ; the minister of those who were about to 
depart answered him by another sermon. Long did they 
pray together ere they exchanged a parting embrace ; and 
then, as the one party sailed away, the other returned sorrow- 
fully, to await amid a strange people, the opportunity and 
means of rejoining their brethren.* Several expeditions of 
this kind took place successively and without obstacle, owing 
to the obscurity of the fugitives. But all at once, in 1637, 
the king perceived that they had become numerous and fre- 
quent, that considerable citizens engaged in them, that they 
carried away with them great riches ; already, it was said, 
more than twelve millions of property had thus been lost to 
the country. f It was no longer merely a few weak and ob- 
scure sectarians who felt the weight of tyranny ; their 
opinions had spread, and their feelings were shared, even by 
the classes which did not adopt their opinions. In various 
ways, the government had rendered itself so odious, that 
thousands of men, differing in rank and fortune and objects, 
severed themselves from their native land. An order of the 
council forbade these emigrations (May 1, 1637).:}: At that 
very time, eight vessels, ready to depart, were at anchor in 
the Thames : on board one of them were Pym, Haslerig, 
Hampden, and Cromwell. § 

They were wrong to fly from tyranny, for the people began 
to brave it. Fermentation had succeeded to discontent. It 

* Neal, ii., 110. t lb., 186. t Rushworth, i., 2, 409. 

§ Neal, ii., 237. Walpole, Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors 
(1733), i., 206. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 85 

was no longer merely the re-establishment of legal order, nor 
even the abolition of episcopacy, that men's thoughts limited 
themselves to. In the shadow of the great party which medi- 
tated this double reform, a number of more ai'dent, more daring 
sects were growing up. On all sides, small congregations 
detached themselves from the church, taking as their symbol 
some such or such interpretation of a dogma ; some the re- 
jection of such or such a rite ; some the destruction of all 
ecclesiastical government, the absolute independence of the 
faithful, and the having recourse alone to the inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit. Everywhere passion mastered fear. Notwith- 
standing the active inquisition of Laud, sects of all descriptions 
assembled, in towns, in some cellar ; in the country, under the 
roof of a barn, or in the midst of a wood. The dismal cha- 
racter of the locality, their perils and difficulties in meeting, 
all excited the imagination of preachers and hearers ; they 
passed together long hours, often whole nights, praying, singing 
hymns, seeking the Lord, and cursing their enemies. Of 
little import to the safety, or even to the credit of these fanatic 
associations, was the senselessness of their doctrines, or the 
small number of their partisans ; they were sheltered and pro- 
tected by the general resentment that had taken possession of 
the country. In a short time, whatever their appellation, their 
creed, or their designs, the confidence of the nonconformists in 
public favor became so great, that they did not hesitate to dis- 
tinguish themselves by their dress and their manners, thus 
professing their opinions before the very eyes of their perse- 
cutors. Clothed in black, the hair cut close, the head covered 
with a high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat, they were everywhere 
objects of respect to the multitude, who gave them the name 
of saints. Their credit augmented to such a degree, that 
notwithstanding the persecution which followed them, even 
hypocrisy declared on their side. Bankrupt merchants, work- 
men without employment, men rendered outcasts by debauch- 
ery and debts, whoever needed to raise his character in the 
estimation of the public, assumed the dress, air, and language 
of the saints, and at once obtained, from a passionate credulity, 
welcome and protection.* In political matters the efferves- 
cence, though less general, less disorderly, daily extended. 

* Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs. 
8 



86 HISTORY OF THE 



Among the inferior classes, the effect either of their bettered 
means, or of religious opinions, ideas and desires of equality, 
till then unknown, began to circulate. In a more elevated 
sphere, some proud and rugged minds, detesting the court, 
despising the impotency of the ancient laws, and giving them- 
selves up -passionately to their soaring thoughts, dreamed, in 
the solitude of their reading, or the secresy of their private 
conversations, of more simple and efficacious institutions. 
Others, influenced by aims less pure, indifferent to all creeds, 
profligate in their manners, and thrown by their humor or by 
chance among the discontented, desired an anarchy which 
would make way for their ambition, or at all events free them 
from all restraint. Fanaticism and licentiousness, sincerity 
and hypocrisy, respect and contempt for old institutions, le- 
gitimate wishes, and disorderly aspirations — all these concurred 
to foment the national anger ; all rallied together against a 
power whose tyranny inspired with the same hatred men of 
the most various feelings and views, while its imprudence and 
weakness gave activity and hope to the meanest factions, to 
the most daring dreams. 

For some time this progress of public indignation passed 
unperceived by the king and his council ; apart, as it were, 
from the nation, and meeting with no effectual resistance, the 
government, notwithstanding its embarrassments, was still 
confident and haughty. To justify its conduct, it often spoke, 
and with marked emphasis, of the bad spirit that- was abroad ; 
but its momentary doubts did not awaken its prudence ; while" 
it feared, it despised its enemies. Even the necessity of making, 
day after day, its oppression still more and more oppressive, 
did not enlighten it ; nay, with an imbecile pride, it regarded 
as manifestations of power the additional rigor which the in- 
creasing peril obliged it to put in force. 

In 1636, England was inundated with pamphlets against the 
favor shown to the papists, the disorders of the court, above 
all, against the tyranny of Laud and the bishops. Already 
more than once the star-chamber had severely punished such 
publications, but never before had they been so numerous, so 
violent, so diffused, so eagerly sought for as now. They were 
spread through every town, they found their way to the re- 
motest villages ; daring smugglers brought thousands of copies 
from Holland, realizing a large profit ; they were commented 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 87 

on in the churches, which Laud had not been able entirely to 
clear of puritan preachers. Incensed at the inefficacy of its 
ordinary severities, the council resolved to try others. A 
lawyer, a theologian, and a physician, Prynne, Burton, and 
Bastwick, were brought at the same time before the star- 
chamber. The government at first wished to try them for high 
treason, which would have involved capital punishment ; but 
the judges declared there were no means of straining the law 
so far, so that they were fain to content themselves with a 
charge of petty treason or felony.* 

The iniquity of the proceedings quite matched the barbarity 
of the sentence. The accused were summoned to make their 
defence forthwith, or that the allegations would be held as 
admitted. They answered they could not write it, for that 
paper, ink, and pens had been denied them. These were 
supplied, with an order to have their defence signed by a 
barrister ; and yet for several days access to the prison was 
refused to the barrister they had selected. Admitted at last, 
he refused to sign the paper, fearing to compromise himself 
with the court ; and no other counsel would undertake it. They 
asked permission to give in their defence signed by themselves. 
The court rejected the application, with the intimation that 
v/ithout a barrister's signature, they should consider the im- 
puted offences proved. " My lords," said Prynne, " you ask 
an impossibility." The court merely repeated its declaration. 
The trial opened with a gross insult to one of the prisoners. 
Four years before, for another pamphlet, Prynne had been 
condemned to have his ears cut off. " I had thought," said 
lord Finch, looking at him, " Mr. Prynne had no ears ; but 
methinks he hath ears." This caused many of the lords to 
take a closer view of him, and for their better satisfaction the 
usher of the court turned up his hair and showed his ears, 
upon the sight whereof the lords were displeased they had 
been no more cut off, and reproached him. " I hope your 
honors will not be offended," said Prynne ; " pray God give 
you ears to hear."f 

They were sentenced to the pillory, to lose their ears, to 
pay 5000Z. and to perpetual imprisonment. On the day of 
the sentence (June 30), an immense crowd pressed round the 

* Rushworth, i., 2, 324. f State Trials, iii., 711. 



88 HISTORY OF THE 



pillory ; the executioner wanted to keep them off: " Let them 
come, and spare not," said Burton ; " that they may learn to 
suffer ;" the man was moved, and did not insist.* " Sir," 
said a woman to Burton, " by this sermon, God may convert 
many unto him." He answered, " God is able to do it, in- 
deed I"! A young man turned pale, as he looked at him : 
" Son, son," said Burton to him, " what is the matter, you 
look so pale ? I have as much comfort as my heart can hold, 
and if I had need of more I should have it.":j: The crowd 
pressed nearer and nearer round the condemned ; some one 
gave Bastwick a bunch of flowers ; a bee settled on it : " Do 
ye not see this poor bee," said he, " she hath found out this 
very place to suck sweet from these flowers ; and cannot I 
suck sweetness in this very place from Christ ?"§ " Had we 
respected our liberties," said Prynne, " we had not stood here 
at this time ; it was for the general good and liberties of you 
all that we have now thus far engaged our own liberties in 
this cause. For did you know how deeply they have en- 
croached on your liberties, if you knew but into what times 
you are cast, it would make you look about, and see how far 
your liberty did lawfully extend, and so maintain it."|| The 
air rang with solemn acclamations. 

Some months after (April 18), the same scenes were re- 
newed around the scaffold where, for the same cause, Lilburne 
was undergoing a like cruel treatment. The enthusiasm of 
the sufferer and the people seemed even still greater. Tied 
to a cart's tail and whipped through the streets of Westmin- 
ster, Lilburne never ceased from exhorting the multitude that 
closely followed him. When bound to the pillory, he con- 
tinued to speak ; he was ordered to be silent, but in vain ; 
they gagged him. He then drew from his pockets pamphlets, 
which he threw to the people, who seized them with avidity ; 
his hands were then tied. Motionless and silent, the crowd 
who had heard him remained to gaze upon him. Some of 
his judges were at a window, as if curious to see how far his 
perseverance would go ; he exhausted their curiosity. IT 

As yet the martyrs had been only men of the people ; none 
of them distinguished by name, talents, or fortune ; most of 
them, indeed, before their trial, were of but little considera- 

* State Trials, iii., 751. t lb., 753. J lb., 752. 

§ lb., 751. II lb., 748. IT State Trials, 1315, et seq. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. ' 89 

tion in their profession ; and the opinions they maintained 
were, chiefly, those of the fanatic sects, which were popular 
more especially with the multitude. Proud of their courage, 
the people soon charged the higher classes with weakness and 
apathy : " Honor," said they, " that did use to reside in the 
head, is now, like the gout, got into the foot."* But it was 
not so : the country nobles and gentlemen, and the higher 
class of citizens, were no less irritated than the people ; but 
more clear-sighted and less enthusiastic, they waited for some 
great occasion giving well-grounded expectation of success. 
This public cry aroused them, and inspired them with confi- 
dence. The time had come when the nation, thoroughly ex- 
cited, only needed known, steady, influential leaders, who 
would resist, not as adventurers or mere sectaries, but in the 
name of the rights and interests of the whole country. 

A gentleman of Buckinghamshire, John Hampden, gave 
the signal for this national resistance. Before him, indeed, 
several had attempted it, but unsuccessfully ; they, like him, 
had refused to pay the impost called ship money, requiring to 
have the question brought before the court of king's bench, 
and that they siiould be allowed, in a solemn trial, to maintain 
their opinion of the illegality of the tax, and the legality of 
their refusal to pay it ; but the court had hitherto always 
found means to elude the discussion ;-|- Hampden enforced it. 
Though in 1626 and 1628 he had sat in parliament on the 
benches of the opposition, he had not attracted any peculiar 
suspicion on the part of the court. Since the last dissolution, 
he had lived tranquilly, sometimes on his estates, sometimes 
travelling over England and Scotland, everywhere attentively 
observing the state of men's minds, and forming numerous 
connexions, but giving no utterance to his own feelings. Pos- 
sessing a large fortune, he enjoyed it honorably, and without 
display ; of grave and simple manners, but without any show 
of austerity, remarkable for his atfability and the serenity of 
his temper, he was respected by all his neighbors, of whatever 
party, and passed among them for a sensible man, opposed to 
the prevalent system, but not fanatic or factious. The magis- 
trates of the country, accordingly, without fearing, spared 

* A saying related in a letter of lord Haughton to sir Thomas Went- 
worth, dated May 19th, 1627. Strafford's Letters and Despatches, i., 38. 
t Rushworth, i., 2, 323, 414, &c. 



90 HISTOEY OF THE 



him. In 1636, in their assessment, they rated Hampden at 
the trifling sum of twenty shillings, intending without .doubt 
to let him ofi" easy, and also hoping that the smallness of the 
rate would prevent a prudent man from disputing it. Hamp- 
den refused to pay it, but without passion, or noise ; solely 
intent upon bringing to a solemn judicial decision, in his own 
person, the rights of his country. In prison, his conduct was 
equally quiet and reserved ; he only required to be brought 
before the judges, and represented that the king was no less 
interested than himself in having such a question settled by 
the laws. The king, full of confidence, having recently ob- 
tained from the judges the declaration, that, in case of urgent 
necessity, and for the security of the kingdom, this tax might 
be legally imposed, was, at last, persuaded to allow Hampden 
the honor of fighting the case. Hampden's counsel managed 
the affair with the same prudence that he himself had shown, 
speaking of the king and his prerogative with profound 
respect, avoiding all declamation, all hazardous principles, 
resting solely on the laws and history of the country.* One 
of them, Mr. Holborne, even checked himself several times, 
begging the court to forgive him the warmth of his arguments, 
and to warn him if he passed the limits which decorum and 
law prescribed. The crown lawyers, themselves, praised Mr. 
Hampden for his moderation. During the thirteen days the 
trial lasted, amid all the public irritation, the fundamental 
laws of the country were debated without the defenders of 
public liberty once laying themselves open to any charge of 
passion, any suspicion of seditious design. ■[■ 

Hampden was condemned (June 12), only four judges 
voting in his favor,:]: The king congratulated himself on this 
decision, as the decisive triumph of arbitrary power. The 
people took the same view of it, and no longer hoped aught 

* Rushworth, i., 2, 352 ; State Trials, iii., 825. 

t State Trials, iii., 846-1254. 

j Sir Humphrey Davenport, sir John Denham, sir Richard Hutton, 
and sir George Crooke. Contrary to the general assertion, Mr. Lin- 
gard says that five judges declared in favor of Hampden. Hist, of 
England, 1825, x., 33. His error evidently arises from his having 
reckoned for two voices, the two opinions given in favor of Hampden 
by Judge Crooke, which are both inserted in the trial. (State Trials, 
iii., 1127-1181.) In 1645, the son of Judge Hutton was killed at Sher- 
burne for the royal cause. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 91 

from the magistrates or the laws. Charles had but small cause 
for rejoicing : the people, in losing hope, gained courage. 
Discontent, hitherto deficient in cohesion, became unanimous : 
gentlemen, citizens, farmers, tradespeople, presbyterians, sec- 
tarians, the whole nation felt itself wounded by this decision.* 
The name of Hampden was in every mouth, pronounced with 
tenderness and pride, for his destiny was the type of his con- 
duct, his conduct the glory of the country. The friends and 
partizans of the court scarcely dared to maintain the legality 
of its victory. The judges excused themselves, almost con- 
fessing their cowardice, to obtain forgiveness. The more 
peaceful citizens were sorrowfully silent ; the bolder spirits 
expressed their indignation aloud, with secret satisfaction. 
Soon, both in London and the provinces, the discontented 
found leaders who met to talk of the future. Everywhere 
measures were taken to concert with and uphold each other 
in case of necessity. In a word, a party was formed, care- 
fully concealing itself as such, but publicly avowed by the 
nation. The king and his council were still rejoicing over 
their last triumph, when already their adversaries had found 
the occasion and the means to act. 

About a month after Hampden's condemnation (July 23), 
a violent sedition broke out at Edinburgh. It was excited by 
the arbitrary and sudden introduction of a new liturgy. 
Since his accession, after the example of his father, Charles 
had incessantly been endeavoring to overthrow the republican 
constitution which the Scottish church had borrowed from 
Calvinism, and to re-establish Scottish episcopacy, the outline 
of which still existed, in the plenitude of its authority and 
splendor. Fraud, violence, threats, corruption, everything 
had been essayed to procure success for this design. Despot- 
ism had even shown itself supple and patient ; it had addressed 
itself sometimes to the ambition of the ecclesiastics, sometimes 
to the interest of the small landed proprietors, offering to the 
latter an easy redemption of their tithes, to the former high 
church dignities and honorable offices in the state, always 
advancing towards its object, yet contenting itself with a slow 
and tortuous progress. From time to time the people became 
more and more alarmed, and the national clergy resisted ; its 

* May, passim. Hocket, Life of Bishop Williams, part 2, p. 127. 



92 HISTOEY OF THE 



assemblies were then suspended, its boldest preachers banished. 
The parliament, generally servile, sometimes hesitated ; the 
elections were then interfered with, their debates stifled, even 
their votes falsified.* The Scottish church, in the course of 
struggles wherein victory always declared for the crown, 
passed by degrees under the yoke of a hierarchy and disci 
pline, nearly conformable with that of the English church, 
and which regarded as equally sacred the absolute ppwer and 
the divine right of bishops and of the king. In 1636, the work 
seemed all but completed ; the bishops had recovered their 
jurisdiction ; the archbishop of St. Andrew's (Spottiswood) 
was chancellor of the kingdom, the bishop of Ross (Maxwell) 
on the point of becoming high treasurer ; out of fourteen pre- 
lates, nine had seats in the privy council, and preponderated 
there. f Charles and Laud thought the time had come for 
consummating the matter by imposing upon this church, with- 
out consulting either clergy or people, a code of canons, and 
a mode of worship, in accordance with its new condition. 

But the reformation had not been in Scotland, as in Eng- 
land, born of the will of the prince and the servility of the 
court. Popular from its commencement, it had, by its own 
strength, and in spite of all obstacles, mounted to the throne 
instead of descending from it. No difference of system, 
situation, or interests had, from the outset, divided its parti- 
sans ; and in the course of a long struggle, they had accus- 
tomed themselves, by turns, to brave &,nd to wield power. 
The Scottish preachers might boast of having raised the 
nation, sustained civil war, dethroned a queen, and ruled 
their king till the day when, ascending a foreign throne, he 
escaped from their empire. Strong in this union, and in the 
remembrance of so many victories, they boldly mixed toge- 
ther, in their sermons as in their private thoughts, politics and 
religion, the affairs of the country and religious controversies ; 
and from the pulpit censured by name the king's ministers 
and their own parishioners alike freely. The people, in such 
a school, had acquired the same audacity of mind and speech ; 
owing to themselves alone the triumph of the reformation, 
they cherished it not only as their creed, but also as the work 
of their hands. They held as a fundamental maxim the 

* Burnet's Own Times ; Laing, Hist, of Scotland, iii., 110. 
t Laing, iii., 122. 



ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. 93 

spiritual independence of their church, not the religious supre- 
macy of the monarch, and thought themselves in a position, 
as well as called upon by duty, to protect against popery, 
royalty, and episcopacy, that which alone it had set up against 
them. The preponderance given to their kings, by their 
elevation to the throne of England, for awhile abated their 
courage ; hence the success of James against those presbyte- 
rian doctrines and institutions, which, as simple king of Scot- 
land, he had been fain submit to. Kings are easily deceived 
by the apparent servility of nations. Scotland intimidated, 
seemed to Charles, Scotland subdued. By the aid of his su- 
premacy and of episcopacy, he had kept under in England 
the popular reformation which had always been successfully 
contested by his predecessors ; he thought he could destroy it 
in Scotland, where it had reigned, where it was alone legally 
constituted, where the supremacy of the throne was only 
acknowledged by the bishops themselves, barely able to retain 
their own position by its support. 

The attempt had that issue which has often, in similar cases, 
been the astonishment and sorrow of the servants of despotism : 
it failed at the point of apparent success. The re-establishment 
of episcopacy, the abolition of the ancient laws, the suspension 
or corruption of political and religious assemblies, all that could 
be done out of sight, as it were, of the people, had been done. 
But the instant that, to complete the work, it became necessary 
to change the form of public worship, on the very day of the 
introduction of the new liturgy into the cathedral of Edin- 
burgh, all was over. In a few weeks, a sudden and universal 
rising brought to Edinburgh* (Oct. 18, 16-37), from all parts 
of the kingdom, an immense multitude, landholders, farmers, 
citizens, tradesmen, peasants, who came to protest against the 
innovations with which their worship was threatened, and to 
back their protest by their presence. They crowded the houses 
and streets, encamped at the gates and beneath the walls of the 
town, besieged the hall of the privy council, who vainly de- 
manded assistance from the municipal council, itself besieged, 
insulted the bishops as they passed, and drew up, in the High- 
street, an accusation of tyranny and idolatry against them, 
which was signed by ecclesiastics, gentlemen, and even by 
some lords. f The king, without answering their complaints, 

* Rushworth, i., 2, 404. t Neal, ii., 274 ; Laing, ill., 136. 



^4 HISTORY OF THE 



ordered the petitioners to return home ; tliey obeyed, less from 
submission than from necessity ; and returned in a month 
(Nov. 15) more numerous than before. This second time 
there was no disorder, their passion was grave and silent ; the 
upper classes had engaged in the quarrel ; in a fortnight, a 
regular organization of resistance was proposed, adopted, and 
put in action ; a superior council, elected from the different 
ranks of citizens, was charged to prosecute the general enter- 
prise ; in every county, in every town, subordinate councils 
executed its instructions. The insurrection had disappeared, 
ready to rise at the voice of the government it had given itself. 
Charles at last replied * (Dec. 7), but only to confirm the 
liturgy, and to forbid the petitioners to assemble, under the 
penalties of treason. The Scottish council were ordered to 
keep the royal proclamation secret, until the moment of its 
publication ; but ere it reached Scotland, the leaders of the in- 
surrection already knew its contents. They immediately con- 
voked the people, to support their representatives. The council, 
to anticipate them, at once published the proclamation (Feb. 
19, 1638). At the same moment, on the very footsteps of the 
king's heralds, two peers of the realm, lord Hume and lord 
Lindsay, caused a protest, which they had signed, to be pro- 
claimed and placarded in the name of their fellow-citizens. 
Others performed the same office in every place where the 
king's proclamation was read. Every day more excited, more 
menaced, more united, the insurgents at last resolved to bind 
themselves by a solemn league, similar to those which, since 
the origin of the reformation, Scotland had several times 
adopted, in order to set forth and maintain before all men their 
rights, their faith, aad their wishes. Alexander Henderson, 
the most influential of the ecclesiastics, and Archibald John- 
ston, afterwards lord Warriston, a celebrated advocate, drew 
up this league under the popular name of Covenant ; it was 
revised and approved of by the lords Balmerino, Loudon, and 
Rothes (March 1, 1638). It contained, besides a minute and 
already ancient profession of faith, the formal rejection of the 
new canons and liturgy, and an oath of national union to defend, 
against every danger, the sovereign, the religion, the laws and 
liberties of the country. It was no sooner proposed than it was 



* Rushworth, i., 2, 408. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 95 

received with universal transport. Messengers, relieving each 
other from village to village, carried it, with incredible rapidity, 
to the most remote parts of the kingdom, as the fiery cross was 
borne over the mountains to call to war all the vassals of the 
same chieftain.* Gentlemen, clergy, citizens, laborers, wo- 
men, children, all assembled in crowds in the churches, in the 
streets, to swear fealty to the covenant. Even the highlanders, 
seized with the national impulse, forgot for a moment their pas- 
sionate loyalty and fierce animosity to the lowlanders, and 
joined the insurgents. In less than six weeks, all Scotland was 
confederated under the law of the covenant. The persons em- 
ployed by government, a few thousand catholics, and the town 
of Aberdeen, alone refused to join it. 

So much daring astonished Charles : he had been told of in- 
sane riots by a miserable rabble; the municipal council of 
Edinburgh had even come forward humbly to solicit his cle- 
mency, promising the prompt chastisement of the factious ; and 
his Scottish courtiers boasted daily of learning, by their corre- 
spondence, that all was quiet, or nearly so.f Incensed at the 
powerlessness of his will, he resolved to have recourse to force ; 
but nothing was ready ; it was necessary to gain time. The 
marquis of Hamilton was sent to Scotland, instructed to flatter 
the rebels with some hope, but not to say anything binding the 
king or to come to any settlement. Twenty thousand cove- 

* When a chief wished to assemble his clan on any sudden and im- 
portant occasion, he killed a goat, made a cross of some light wood, set 
the four ends of it on fire, and then extinguished them in the blood of 
the goat. The cross was called the fiery cross, or the cross of shame ; 
because he who refused to obey the token was declared infamous. The 
cross was given into the hands of a quick and trusty messenger, who, 
running rapidly to the nearest hamlet, transferred it to the principal 
person, without uttering any other word than the name of the place of 
rendezvous. The new messenger forwarded it with equal promptitude 
to the next village ; it thus went, with amazing celerity, over the whole 
district dependent on the same chief ; and passed on to those of his 
allies, if the danger was common to them. At the sight of the fiery 
cross, every man from sixteen to sixty, capable of bearing arms, was 
obliged to take his best weapons and his best accoutrements, and to 
proceed to the place of rendezvous. He who failed in this, was liable 
to have his lands devastated by fire and blood ; a peril of which the fiery 
cross was the emblem. In the civil war of 1745, the fiery cross was 
often in circulation in Scotland ; once in particular, it travelled in three 
hours the whole district of Breadalbane, about thirty miles. This cus- 
tom existed in most of the Scandinavian nations. 

t Clarendon, i. 



96 HISTORY OF THE 



nanters, assembled at Edinburgh for a solemn fast, went to 
meet Hamilton (June, 1638) ; seven hundred clergymen, 
dressed in their robes, stood on an eminence by the road side, 
singing a psalm as he passed.* The party wished to give the 
marquis a high idea of its strength ; and Hamilton, as well to 
preserve his credit with the country as to obey the instruc- 
tions of his master, was inclined to seem conciliatory. But 
the concessions he proposed were deemed insufficient and de- 
ceitful ; a royal covenant he attempted to set up, in opposition 
to the popular covenant, was rejected with derision. After 
several useless interviews, and several journeys from Edin- 
burgh to London, he suddenly (Sept.) received from the king 
orders to grant to the insurgents all their demands ; the aboli- 
tion of the canons, of the liturgy, and of the court of high com- 
mission ; the promise of an assembly of the kirk, and of a par- 
liament in which all questions should be freely debated, and in 
which even the bishops might be impeached. The Sco's were 
at once rejoiced, and utterly amazed ; but still mistrustful, and 
the more so from the care taken to remove every pretext for 
their longer confederating. The general synod assembled at 
Glasgow (Nov. 21). It soon perceived that Hamilton's only 
object was to impede their progress, and to introduce into its 
acts some nullifying articles. Such, in fact, were the king's 
instructions. f The assembly, however, proceeded, and were 
taking measures to bring the bishops to trial, when Hamilton 
suddenly pronounced their dissolution (Nov. 28). At the same 
time they heard that Charles was preparing for war, and that 
a body of troops levied in Ireland, by the exertions of Strafford, 
was on the point of embarking for Scotland. :j; Hamilton de- 
parted for London ; but the synod refused to disperse, con- 
tinued their deliberations, condemned all the royal innovations, 
asserted the covenant, and abolished episcopacy. Several 
lords, till then neutral (among others the earl of Argyle, a 
powerful nobleman, and renowned for his wisdom), openly 
embraced the cause of their country. Scottish merchants 
went abroad to buy ammunition and arms ; the covenant was 
sent to the Scottish troops serving on the Continent, and one of 
their best officers, Alexander Leslie, was invited to return 
home, to take, in case of need, the command of the insurgents. 

* May, i., 40. t See Appendix, No. V. 

t Strafford, ii., 233, 278, 279. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 97 

Finally, in the name of the Scottish people, a declaration was 
addressed to the English nation (Feb. 27), to acquaint them 
with the just grievances of their brother Christians, and to repel 
the calumnies with which their common enemies sought to 
blacken them and their cause. 

The court received this declaration with ridicule ; the con- 
duct of the insurgents was laughed at there, as absurd inso- 
lence ; the only thing the courtiers professed to be annoyed at 
was the degrading annoyance of having to fight them ; for 
what glory, what profit, could be got by a war with a people 
so poor, vulgar and obscure 1* Though a Scotchman himself 
Charles trusted that the old hatred and contempt of the English 
for Scotland would prevent the covenanters' complaints from 
taking any effect upon men's minds in the south. But the 
faith which unites nations soon effaces the boundary-line that 
divides them. In the cause of the Scots, the malcontents of 
England ardently recognized their own. Secret correspon- 
dence was rapidly established between the two kingdoms. 
The declarations of the insurgents were spread everywhere ; 
their grievances, their proceedings, their hopes, became the 
subject of popular conversation ; in a short time, they acquired 
friends and agents in London, in all the counties, in the army, 
even at court. As soon as their firm resolution to resist was 
ascertained, and that opinion in England seemed to lend them 
its support, there were not wanting Scotch, and even English 
courtiers, who, to injure some rival, to revenge themselves 
for some refusal, to provide against chances, hastened to ren- 
der them, underhand, ffood service, sometimes by sending 
them information, sometimes by exaggerating to the other 
courtiers their number, boasting of their discipline, and affect- 
ing great uneasiness on the king's account, and regret that 
he should incur such difficulties and dangers from want of a 
little complaisance. The royal army, in its way towards 
Scotland, encountei'ed a thousand reports spread on purpose 
to intimidate and keep it back ; the earl of Essex, its general, 
was earnestly advised to beware, to wait for reinforcements ; 
the enemy, it was said, was much superior to him ; they had 
been seen at such a place, near the frontiers ; they occupied 
all the fortresses ; even Berwick would be in their hands 

* May, i., 47. 



98 HISTORY OF THE 



before he could arrive there. The earl, a scrupulous and 
faithful officer, though but little favorable to the designs of the 
court, continued his march, entered Berwick without obstacle, 
and soon found that the troops of the insurgents were neither 
so numerous nor so well prepared as he had been told. Yet 
these reports, as eagerly listened to as they were carefully 
spread, did not the less trouble men's minds.* The anxiety 
increased when the king arrived at York (April). He went 
there surrounded with extraordinary pomp, still infatuated with 
the idea of the irresistible ascendency of royal majesty, and 
flattering himself that to displaj^ it would suffice to make the 
rebels return to their duty. As if to balance the appeal of 
nation to nation, which had been made by Scotland to England, 
he, in his turn, appealed to the nobility of his kingdom, sum- 
moning them, according to the feudal custom, to come and 
render him, on this occasion, the service they owed him. 

The lords and a crowd of gentlemen flocked to York as to 
a festival. The town and camp presented the appearance of 
a court and tournament, not at all that of an army and of 
war. Charles's vanity was delighted with such display ; but 
intrigue, disorder, and insubordination prevailed around him."]" 
The Scots on the frontiers familiarly communicated with his 
soldiers. He wanted to exact from the lords an oath, that 
they would upon no pretext whatever keep up any connexion 
with the rebels ; lord Brook and lord Say refused to take it ; 
and Charles dared not proceed further against them than to 
order them to quit his court. Lord Holland entered the 
Scottish territory, but on seeing a body of troops whom Leslie 
had skilfully disposed, and whom the earl, without much 
examination, considered more numerous than his own, he 
withdrew with precipitation.:]: Officers and soldiers all hesi- 
tated to commence a war so generally anathematized. The 
Scots, well informed of what passed, took advantage of this 
disposition. They wrote to the chiefs of the army, to lord 
Essex, lord Arundel, lord Holland, in moderate and flattering 
terms, expressing an entire confidence in the sentiments of the 
nobility as well as of the people of England, and praying 
them to interpose and obtain for them from the king justice 
and the restoration of his favor. § Soon, sure of being sup- 

* Clarendon, i f lb., i. J Rushworth, ii., 2, 935. § Clarendon, i. 



EJNTGLISH REVOLUTION. 99 

ported, they addressed the king himself, with humble respect, 
but without relinquishing any of their claims.* Charles, a 
man without enei'gy, and as readily put out by obstacles as 
he was heedless before they presented themselves, felt alto- 
gether embarrassed. Conferences were opened (June 11)."}" 
The king was haughty, but eager to conclude the matter ; the 
Scots obstinate, but not insolent. Charles's pride was content 
with the humility of their language • and on the 18th of June, 
1639, by the advice of Laud himself, uneasy, it is said, at 
the approach of danger, a pacification was concluded at Ber- 
wick, under which both armies were ordered to break up, and 
a synod and Scotch parliament to be shortly convoked, but 
without any clear and precise treaty to put an end to the 
differences which had given rise to the war. 

That war was only adjourned, and this both parties equally 
foresaw. The Scots, in dismissing their troops, gave the 
officers an advance of pay, and ordered them to hold them- 
selves constantly in readiness.:]: On his side, Charles had 
scarcely disbanded his army before he began secretly to levy 
another. A month after the pacification he sent for Strafford 
to London to consult him, as he said, on some military plans ; 
and he added, " I have much more, and indeed too much 
cause to desire your counsel and attendance for some time, 
which I think not fit to express by letter, more than this : the 
Scots covenant begins to spread too far."§ Strafford obeyed 
the summons instantly. It had long been his most ardent 
desire to be employed near his master, the only post in which 
his ambition could hope for the power and glory it aimed at. 
He arrived, resolved to employ against the adversaries of the 
crown the whole of his energies ; speaking of the Scots with 
profound contempt, asserting that irresolution alone had 
caused the late failure, and yet so confident in the firmness of 
the king, that he promised himself from it irresistible support. 
He found the court agitated with petty intrigues ; the earl of 
Essex, treated coldly, notwithstanding his good conduct in the 
campaign, had retired in discontent ; the officers mutually 
accused each otlier of incapacity or want of courage ; the 
queen's favorites were eagerly at work, seeking to turn the 
general embarrassments to the advancement of their own 

* Rushwortli,.ii., 2, 93S. t lb., 940. t Whitelocke, 31. 

§ Strafford's Letters and Despatches, ii., 372. 



100 HISTORY OF THE 



fortunes and the downfal of their rivals ; the king himself was 
low-spirited and anxious.* Strafford, however, soon felt ill at 
ease, and unable to obtain the adoption of what he judged 
necessary or to carry out even what he had got adopted. 
The intrigues of the courtiers were soon directed against him. 
He could not prevent one of his personal enemies, sir Harry 
Vane, from being, through the queen's influence, elevated to 
the rank of secretary of state. f The public, who had wit- 
nessed his arrival with anxiety, uncertain what use he would 
make of his power, soon learned that he was urging the most 
rigorous measures, and pursued him with their maledictions.:}: 
Matters became pressing. A dispute had arisen between the 
king and the Scots, as to the construction of the treaty of Ber- 
wick, of which scarcely anything had been reduced to writing ; 
Charles had had a paper, which, according to the covenanters, 
expressed its real conditions, burnt by the common hangman ; 
of this the Scots now loudly complained, and the king did not 
care to put forth anything in disproof of their statements, for 
in negotiating he had permitted them to hope that which he 
did not mean to accomplish. § Irritated by this want of faith, 
and exhorted by their English friends to redouble their dis- 
trust, the synod and parliament of Scotland, far from yielding 
any of their pretensions, put forth others still more daring. 
The parliament demanded that the king should be bound to 
convoke them every three years, that freedom of election and 
of speech should be assured them, so that political liberty, 
firmly secured, might watch over the maintenance of the 
national faith. 11 The words, "attempt on the prerogative," 
"invaded sovereignty," and so on, now sounded more loudly 
than ever at court and in the council : " I wish these people," 
said Strafford, " were well whipped into their right senses. "IT 
War was resolved upon. But how maintain it ? what new 
and plausible motives put forward to the nation ? The public 
treasury was empty, the king's private purse exhausted, and 
opinion, already sufficiently powerful to make it advisable it 
should be heard, if not followed. The pretext sought for 
offered itself. From the beginning of the troubles, cardinal 
Richelieu, displeased with the English court, in which Spanish 

* Clarendon, i., 214. f Clarendon, i., 216. J May, i., 54, et seq. 
§ Clarendon, i. ; Rushworth, ii., 2, 965. || Rushworth, i., 2, 992. 
IT Strafford's Letters, ii., 138. 



ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. ~ 101 

influence prevailed, had been in correspondence with the 
Scots ; he had an agent ainong them, had sent them money 
and arms, and promised, in case of need, greater assistance. 
A letter from the principal covenanters was intercepted, bear- 
ing the address, ' To the king,' and evidently intended for the 
king of France, whose assistance it I'equested.* Charles and 
the council did not doubt that this appeal to a foreign prince, 
high treason by law, would inspire all England with an 
indignation equal to their own ; this v/as enough, they thought, 
to convince all minds of the legitimacy of the war. In this 
confidence, which served to veil the hard yoke of necessity, 
the calling of a new parliament was determined upon, and 
meantime, Strafford returned to Ireland (March 16, 1640) to 
obtain supplies and soldiers from the parliament of that king- 
dom also. 

At the news that a parliament was summoned, England 
was astonished ; it had ceased to hope for a legal reform, 
though such was all it had thought of. However great its 
discontent, all violent designs were foreign to the ideas of the 
nation. Sectarians, in some places the multitude, and a few 
men already compromised as leaders of the nascent parties, 
alone fostered darker passions and more extended designs. 
The public had approved and upheld them in their resistance, 
but without sharing in any of their ulterior projects, or even 
conceiving their existence. Continuous troubles had made 
many worthy citizens doubt, if not as to the lawfulness, at 
least as to the propriety of the ardor and obstinacy of the last 
parliaments. They called to mind, without blaming, but with 
regret, the harshness of their language, the disorderly charac- 
ter of their excited debates, and all promised themselves 
greater moderation in future. Under the influence of these 
feelings, the constituencies returned a house of commons op- 
posed to the court, resolved to have all grievances redressed, 
and in which all those men whose opposition had rendered 
them popular took a seat, but composed, for the most part, of 

* Clarendon, i. ; Whitelocke, 32. See in particular the pieces pub- 
lished on this subject by M. Mazure, at the end of his Hist, de la Revo- 
lution de 1688, iii., 402. They evidently prove, contrary to the opinion 
of Hume, Laing, Brodie, &c., that the letter of the Scottish chiefs was 
actually sent to the king of France, and that he received it, though 
Charles managed to intercept a copy of it. 

9* 



102 HISTORY OF THE 



peaceable citizens, free from all party engagements, afraid of 
all violence, all secret combinations, and precipitate resolu- 
tions, and flattering themselves they should reform abuses 
without offending the king, or hazarding the peace of the 
country. 

After considerable delay, which gave some displeasure, 
the parliament met (April 13, 1640). Charles had the letter 
of the Scots to the king of France laid before it, enlarged upon 
their treason, announced war, and demanded subsidies. The 
house of commons took little notice of the letter, and seemed 
to regard it as an incident of no importance compared with 
the great interest they had at stake.* This offended the king, 
who thought the house took up his quarrel with too much in- 
difference. On their side, the house complained of a certain 
want of respect and etiquette towards their speaker, on the 
day of his presentation to the king.-j^ The court, after having 
passed eleven years without a parliament, had some difficulty 
in laying aside its scornful levity : and the house, notwith- 
standing their pacific intentions, had very naturally resumed, 
on their return to Westminster, the dignity of a pul)lic power, 
eleven years slighted, and recalled from necessity. The de- 
bates soon assumed a grave character. The king required 
the house to vote the subsidies before they proceeded to con- 
sider their grievances, promising he would let them sit after- 
wards, and listen with kindness to their representations. Long 
discussions arose on this point, but without violence, though 
the sittings were attended with earnest assiduity, and prolonged 
much later than usual.:}: A few bitter words, escaping from 
members not much known, were immediately repressed, and 
the speeches of several servants of the crown, esteemed in 
other respects, riiet with a favorable reception. § But still 
the house showed a thorough determination to have their 
grievances redressed before they voted supplies. In vain was 
it urged that war was imminent ; they cared little about the 
war, though they did not say as much, out of respect for the 
king. Charles had recourse to the interposition of the lords. 
They voted that in their opinion the subsidies ought to pre- 
cede the question of grievances ; and demanded a conference 
with the commons to exhort them to this procedure. || The 

*Parl. Hist, ii., 535. f lb. | Clarendon, i. § lb. 

II Pari. Hist, ii., 560; Clarendon, i. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 103 

commons accepted the conference, but voted, in their turn, on 
re-entering their own chamber, tliat the resolution of the lords 
was an infringement of their privileges, for that they had no 
right to take notice of supplies till they came regularly before 
them.* Pym, Hampden, St. John, and others, seized upon 
this incident to inflame the house, whose intentions were more 
moderate than suited its principles and its position. It grew 
agitated, impatient, but still checking itself, though fully re- 
solved to maintain its rights. Time passed on ; the king per- 
mitted himself to say that this parliament would be as intrac- 
table as its predecessors. Already irritated, he sent a mes- 
sage to the house, that if they would grant him twelve subsi- 
dies, payable in three years, he would engage henceforth 
never to levy ship-money without the consent of parliament 
(May 4, 1640). f The sum seemed enormous ; it was more, 
they said, than all the money in the kingdom. Besides, it 
was not sufficient that the king should give up ship-money ; 
it was essential that, as a principle, both as to the past and as 
to the future, it should be declared illegal. The house, how- 
ever, had no desire to break entirely with the king ; it was 
demonstrated that the amount of the twelve subsidies was not, 
by a great deal, so high as had been at first said ; and not- 
withstanding their repugnance to suspend the examination of 
grievances, to show their good faith and loyalty, they took the 
message into consideration. They were on the point of de- 
ciding that subsidies should be granted without fixing the 
amount, when the secretary of state, sir Harry Vane, rose, 
and said, that unless the whole of the message were adopted, 
it was not worth while to deliberate, for that the king would 
not accept less than he had asked. The attorney-general, 
Herbert, confirmed Vane's statement.:}: Astonishment and 
anger took possession of the house ; the most moderate were 
struck with consternation. It was late, the debate was ad- 
journed till the next day. But on that day, the moment the 
commons assembled, the king summoned them to the upper 
house ; and three weeks after its convocation parliament was 
dissolved (May 5). 

An hour after the dissolution, Edward Hyde, afterwards 
lord Clarendon, met St. John, the friend of Hampden, and one 

* lb., ii., 563 ; ib., i., 231. t lb., ii., 570 ; ib., i., 232. 

X Clarendon, i. 



104 HISTORY OF THE 



of the leaders of the opposition, already formed into a party. 
Hyde was dispirited ; St. John, on the contrary, though of a 
naturally sombre countenance, and who was never seen to 
smile, had now a joyous look and beaming eyes : — " What 
disturbs you ?" said he to Hyde. " That which disturbs 
many honest men," answered Hyde, " the so imprudent dis- 
solution of so sensible and moderate a parliament, which, 
in our present disorders, was the only one likely to apply a 
remedy." " Ah, well," said St. John, " before things get 
better, they must get still worse ; this parliament would never 
have done what must be done."* 

The same day, in the evening, Charles was full of regret ; 
the disposition of the house, he said, had been falsely repre- 
sented to him : he had never authorized Vane to declare that 
unless he had twelve subsidies he would accept of none. 
Next day, too, he was very uneasy, and assembling a few 
experienced men, asked whether the dissolution could not be 
recalled. This was judged impossible ; and Charles returned 
to despotism, a little more anxious, but as reckless, as haughty, 
as before the attempt he had just made to quit it. 

The urgency of the situation seemed for a moment to re- 
store to his ministers some confidence, to their measures some 
success ; Strafford had returned from Ireland (April 4), suf- 
fering under a violent attack of the gout, threatened with a 
pleurisy, and unable to move.f But he had obtained from 
the Irish Parliament all he had asked ; subsidies, soldiers, 
offers, promises ; and as soon as he could leave his bed, he set 
once more to the work with his accustomed vigor and devo- 
tion. In less than three weeks, voluntary contributions, under 
the influence of his example, poured into the exchequer nearly 
300,000Z., the catholics furnishing the greatest part of it.ij: 
With these were combined all the vexatious means in use, 
forced loans, ship-money, monopolies ; the coining of base 
money was even suggested. § In the eyes of the king and 
his servants, necessity excused everything : but necessity is 
never the limit of tyranny : Charles resumed against the 
members of the parliament his old and worse than useless 
practices of persecution and vengeance. Sir Henry Bellasis 
and sir John Hotham were imprisoned for their speeches j 

* Clarendon, i. f Strafford's Letters, ii., 403. t Neal, ii., 296. 
§ May, i., 63 ; Whitelocke, 32. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 105 

the house and papers of lord Brook were searched ; Mr. 
Carew was sent to the Tower for having refused to give up 
the petitions he had received during tlie session, as chairman 
of the committee appointed to examine them.* An oath was 
exacted from all the clergy never to consent to any alteration 
in the government of the church ; and the oath concluded 
with an et ccetera which provoked a smile of mistrust and 
anger."]" Never had more arrogant or harsher language been 
used : some Yorkshire gentlemen had refused to comply with 
an arbitrary requisition ; the council wished to prosecute 
them : " The only way with my gentlemen," said Strafford, 
" is to send for them up and lo,y them by the heels.":]: He 
knew better than any other the extent of the inevitable evils ; 
but passion in him stifled alike all prudence and all fear ; it 
seemed as though his earnest effort was to communicate to the 
king, the council, and the court, that fever which blinds man 
to his true condition and to his danger. He again fell ill, and 
was even at the brink of the grave ; but his physical weak- 
ness only increased the harshness of his counsels ; and almost 
ere he could stand, he departed with the king for the army, 
already assembled on the frontiers of Scotland, and which he 
was to command. 

On his way, he learnt that the Scots, taking the offensive, 
had entei'ed England (Aug. 21), and on arriving at York, 
he found that at Newburn (Aug. 28), they had beaten, 
almost without resistance, the first English troops that had 
come in their way. Neither of these events was the work 
of the Scots alone. During the pacification, their agents in 
London had contracted a close alliance with the leaders of 
the malcontents, who had exhorted them, if the war re-com- 
menced, promptly to invade England, promising them the aid 
of a numerous party. A messenger was even sent to Scot- 
land bearing inclosed in a hollow staff an engagement to 
that purpose, at the foot of which, to inspire the Scots with 
more confidence, lord Saville, the only ostensible leader of the 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 5S4; Rushworth, ii., 2, 1196. 

t The following was the purport of this paragraph : " I swear, never 
to give consent to any alteration in the government of this church, 
ruled as it is at present by archbishops, bishops, deacons, archdeacons, 
&c." Neal, ii., 302 ; Rushworth, ii., 2, 1186. 

X Strafford's Letters, ii., 409. 



106 HISTOKY OF THE 



plot, had counterfeited the signatures of six of the greatest 
English lords. A fierce hatred against Strafford had alone 
induced lord Saville, a man of very indifferent character, and 
held in very'light estimation, to engage in this audacious in- 
trigue ; but there is every probability that some most influ- 
ential and most sincere patriots had also taken part in it.* 
They had not misconceived the disposition of the people- 
Parliament was no sooner dissolved, than aversion for the 
war was everywhere openly displayed. In London, placards 
called upon the apprentices to rise and tear in pieces Laud, 
the author of so many evils. A furious band attacked his 
palace, and he was obliged to seek refuge at Whitehall. St. 
Paul's church, where the court of high commission sat, was 
forced by another party, crying. No bishops, no high commis- 
sion !'\ Li the counties, violence alone procured recruits. 
To escape enlistment, many persons mutilated, some hanged 
themselves ;:}: those who obeyed the call without resistance, 
were insulted in the streets and treated as cowards by their 
families and friends. Joining their regiments, they carried 
thither, and there found the same feelings. Several officers, 
suspected of popery, were killed by their soldiers. § When 
the army came up with the Scots, the insubordination and 
murmuring redoubled ; it saw the covenant floating, written 
in large characters on the Scottish standards ; it heard the 
drum calling the troops to sermon, and at sunrise the whole 
camp ringing with psalms and prayers. At this sight, at the 
accounts which reached them of the pious ardor and friendly 
disposition of Scotland towards the English, the soldiers were 
alternately softened and incensed, cursing this impious war, 
and already vanquished, for they felt as if fighting against 
their brethren and against God-H Arrived on the banks of 
the Tyne, the Scots, without any hostile demonstration, asked 
leave to pass. An English sentinel fired at them ; a few 
cannons answered ; an action commenced, and almost imme- 
diately the English army dispersed, and Strafford only took 
the command of it to return to York ; leaving the Scots to 
occupy, without obstacle, the country and the towns between 
that city and the frontiers of the two kingdoms. IT 

* Burnet, Own Times; Whitelocke ; Hardwicke's Papers, ii., 187. 
t Clarendon, i. ; Whitelocke, 34. % Strafford's Letters, ii., 351. 
§ Rushworth, i., 1191-2. |1 Heylin, Life of Laud, 454. 

IT Clarendon, i. ; Rushworth, ii., 2, 1236. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 107 

From that moment Strafford himself was conquered. In 
vain did he endeavor, now by good words, now by threats, 
to inspire the troops with other feelings ; his advances to the 
ofRcers were constrained, and ill concealed his contempt and 
anger ; his rigor irritated the soldiers without intimidating 
them. Petitions from several counties soon arrived, enti'eat- 
ing the king to conclude a peace. Lords Wharton and 
Howard ventured to present one themselves ; Strafford caused 
them to be arrested, convoked a court-martial, and demanded 
that they should be shot, at the head of the army, as abettors 
of revolt. The court remained silent ; at length, Hamilton 
spoke : " My lord," said he to Strafford, " when this sentence 
of yours is pronounced, are you sure of the soldiers ?" Straf- 
ford, as if struck with a sudden revelation, turned away his 
head shudderingly, and made no reply.* Yet his indomitable 
pride still upheld his hopes ; " Let the king but speak the 
word," he wrote to Laud, " and I will make the Scots go hence 
faster than they came ; I would answer for it, on my life ; but 
the instructions must come from another than me." In fact, 
Charles already avoided him, afraid of the energy of his 
counsels. 

This prince had fallen into profound despondency ; every 
day brought him some new proof of his weakness ; money was 
wanting, and the old means of raising it no longer answered ; 
the soldiers mutinied or deserted in whole bands ; the people 
were everywhere in a state of excitement, impatient for the 
result which was now inevitable ; the correspondence with the 
Scots was renewed around him, in his camp, in his very 
house. The latter, still prudent in their actions, humble in 
their speech, spared the counties they had invaded, loaded 
their prisoners with kindness and attention, and renewed at 
every opportunity their protestations of pacific views, of 
fidelity and devotion to the king, certain of victory, but 
anxious that it should be the victory of peace. In con- 
nexion with the word peace, that of parliament began to be 
combined. Thereupon Charles, seized with fear, determined 
(Sept. 7),-j- by whose advice is not known, to assemble at York 
the great council of the peers of the kingdom, a feudal assem- 
bly, fallen into desuetude for the last four centuries, but 

* Burnet, Own Times. t Rushworth, ii., 2, 1257. 



lOS HISTORY OF THE 



which formerly, in the time of the wealmess of the commons, 
had often shared alone the sovereign power. Without well 
knowing what this assembly was, or what it could do, there 
was hoped from it more complaisance and consideration for 
the king's honor; it became a question, at court, whether 
possibly this assembly could not of itself vote subsidies.* But, 
before this great council had met, two petitions, one from the 
city of London,"]" the other from twelve of the most eminent 
peers,:]; solicited in express terms, the convocation of a consti- 
tutional parliament. This was enough to overcome the re- 
maining resistance of a king who could do nothing further. 
In the midst of these doubts and fears, Strafford, as much to 
gratify his resentinent, as to justify his councils, had attacked 
the Scots and obtained some advantage over them ; he was 
censured as having compromised the king, and received orders 
to confine himself to his quarters. § The peers met. (Sept. 24.) 
Charles announced to them that he was about to summon a 
parliament, and only claimed their advice in treating with 
the Scots. II Negotiations were begun. Sixteen peers, all 
inclined to the popular party, were charged with their man- 
agement. IF It was first stipulated that both armies should 
remain on foot, and that the king should pay that of the Scots 
as well as his own. For this purpose a loan of 200,000Z. was 
requested of the city of London, and the peers added their 
word to that of the king for its proper expenditure.** After 
signing, at Ripon, the preliminary articles, Charles, anxious 
to relax, in the queen's society, from so many difficulties and 
annoyances, transferred the negotiation to London (Oct. 23),"|"f 
where the parliament was about to assemble. The Scottish 

* Clarendon, i. t Rushworth, ii., 2, 1263. 

J lb., 1262; lords Essex, Bedford, Hertford, Warwick, Bristol, 
Mulgrave, Say and Seal, Howard, Bolingbroke, Mandeville, Brook, and 



§ Clarendon, i. Lingard, x., 95, and Brodie, ii., 589, deny the facts, 
from inductions derived from ofiBcial and contemporary documents ; 
but their reasons do not appear to me sufficient to justify the rejection 
of the evidence of Clarendon, whose narrative is formal, circumstantial, 
and who had no motive for deviating from the truth on this point. 

II Rushworth, ii., 2, 1275. 

IT Lords Bedford, Hertford, Essex, Salisbury, Warwick, Bristol, Hol- 
land, Berkshire, Mandeville, Wharton, Paget, Brook, Pawlet, Howard, 
Saville, Dunsmore. ' 

** Rushworth, ii., 2, 1279, ft lb., 1286. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 109 

commissioners hastened thither, certain of finding powerful 
allies. The elections were proceeding throughout England, 
with the utmost excitement. The court, sad and dispirited, 
in vain sought to exercise some influence over them ; their 
candidates, feebly supported, were rejected on all sides ; they 
could not even carry the return of sir Thomas Gardiner, 
whom the king wished to have as speaker.* The meeting of 
parliament was fixed for the 3d of November. Some per- 
sons advised Laud to choose another day ; this, they said, was 
one of bad omen : the parliament assembled on that day, under 
Henry VIII., began with the ruin of cardinal Wolsey, and 
ended with the destruction of the monasteries. •(■ Laud disre- 
garded the presages, not from superior confidence, but because 
he was weary of the struggle, and, like his master, recklessly 
relied upon the chances of a future, the results of which, 
however, both victors and vanquished were very far from 
suspecting. 

* Clarendon ; Whitelocke, 37. t Whitelocke, 37. 



110 HISTORY OF THE 



BOOK THE THIRD. 

1640—1642. 

Opening of parliament — It seizes on power — State of religious and po- 
litical parties — The king's concessions — Negotiations between the 
king and the leaders of parliament — Conspiracy in the army — Straf- 
ford's trial and death — The king's journey to Scotland — Insurrection 
in Ireland — Debate on the remonstrance — The king's return to Lon- 
don — Progress of the res'olution — Riots — Affair of the five members 
— The king leaves London — The queen's departure for the continent 
— Affair of the militia — Negotiations — The king fixes his residence 
at York — Both parties prepare for war — The king refused admis- 
sion to Hull — Vain attempts at conciliation — Formation of the two 
armies. 

On the appointed day the king opened Parliament. He went 
to Westminster without pomp, almost without retinue, not on 
horseback and along the streets as usual, but by the Thames, 
in a plain boat, shunning observation, like a prisoner following 
the triumph of his conquei'or. His speech was vague and 
embarrassed. In it he promised the redress of all grievances, 
but persisted in calling the Scots " rebels," and in demanding 
that they should be driven from the kingdom, as if the war 
was still proceeding. The commons heard him with cold 
respect. Never at the opening of a session had the attend- 
ance been so numerous ; never had their faces worn so proud 
an aspect in presence of the sovereign.* 

The king had scarcely quitted the house, ere his friends — 
there were very few of them — clearly perceived, from the 
conversation of the various groups, that the public indignation 
surpassed even what they had feared. The dissolution of the 
last parliament had exasperated even the most moderate. 
There was no longer talk of conciliation or caution. The day 
was come, they said, for putting in force the whole power of 
parliament, and eradicating all abuses so effectually that not a 
stray root should remain. Thus, with very unequal strength, 

* Clarendon, il., 1. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. Ill 

thoughts equally haughty found themselves drawn up in battle 
array. For eleven years the kmg and the church had pro- 
claimed their absolute, independent, jure divino sovereignty ; 
they had tried all modes of forcing it upon the nation. Unable 
to effect this, and yet insisting upon the same maxims, they 
came, in their own weakness, to seek aid from an assembly, 
which, without putting it forward as a principle, without 
making any show of it, believed in their own sovereignty, and 
felt themselves capable of exercising it. 

They began by a distinct announcement of all their griev- 
ances. Each member brought with him a petition from his 
town or county ; he read it, and, taking it as the text of a 
speech, proposed, in eacli case, that the house, till more effica- 
cious measures could be adopted, should at least vote the com- 
plaints to be legitimate.* Thus, in a few days, opinion from 
all parts of the country declared itself. Thus were passed in 
review and condemned, all the acts of tyranny, monopolies, 
ship-money, arbitrary arrests, the usurpations of the bishops, 
the proceedings of the extraordinary courts. None opposed 
the resolutions ;-|- such was the unanimity, that several were 
adopted on the motion of men who, soon after, became the 
most intimate confidants of the king.:]: 

As if these means were not sufficient to reveal the whole 
state of the case, more than forty committees were appointed 
to inquire into abuses, and to receive the complaints of the 
citizens. § From day to day, tradesmen and farmers came on 
horseback, in whole bands, bearers to parliament of the com- 
plaints of their town or district. 1| In every direction, such 
accusations were called for ; they resounded from the pulpit, 
in the public streets, and were eagerly received, from what- 
ever quarter, in whatever form, and admitted with equal con- 
fidence, whether they arraigned generally the whole govern- 
ment, or individuals, whose punishment, by name, was de- 
manded. The power of the committees was unlimited ; no 
one had a right to oppose them even by silence, and the mem- 
bers of the privy council themselves were obliged to state, if 
called upon, what had passed in their deliberations. IT 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 640. t lb., 672. 

i Sir John Colepepper, lord Digby, lord Falkland, &c. 

§ Rushworth, i., 2, 28 ; Neal, ii., 318. || Whitelocke, &.C., 38. 

IT Clarendon. 



112 HISTORY OF THE 



To the disapprobation of acts was joined the general pro- 
scription of the actors. Every agent of the crown, of what 
rank soever, who had taken part in the execution of the mea- 
sures condemned, was marked by the name of " delinquent."* 
In every county, a list of the delinquents was drawn up. No 
uniform and definitive punishment was put in effect against 
them ; but they might, at any time, at the pleasure of the 
house, on the least pretext of some new offence, be brought 
before it, and punished by fines, imprisonment, or confisca- 
tion. 

In examining their own elections, the house declared un- 
worthy of a seat among them whoever had taken part in any 
monopoly (Nov. 9, 1640). Four members were on this 
ground excluded (Jan. 21, 1641). Such was the case also 
with several others under the pretext of some irregularity, but, 
in reality, without legal justification, and merely because 
their opinions were distrusted. Two of the most notorious 
monopolists, sir Henry Mildmay and Mr. Whitaker, were ad- 
mitted without obstacle : they had come over to the dominant 
party, t 

At the aspect of this power, so immense, so unlooked for, 
so determined, fear seized upon all the servants of the crown, 
upon all who had to apprehend an accusation or an enemy. 
For them, danger impended from all sides, defence presented 
itself nowhere. The sole desire of the court now was to pass 
unnoticed ; the king concealed his affliction, his uneasiness, 
under the veil of complete inaction ; the judges, trembling for 
themselves, would not have dared to protect a delinquent ; the 
bishops, without attempting to prevent it, saw their innovations 
abolished all around them. John Bancroft, bishop of Oxford, 
died suddenly, from vexation and fear ;:j: the presbyterian 
preachers resumed, without any legal steps, possession of their 
livings and pulpits ; all the dissenting sects publicly assem- 
bled again ; pamphlets of every description circulated in full 
liberty. Royal and episcopal despotism, though still existent, 
with its ministers, its tribunals, its laws, its worship, was 
everywhere motionless, powerless. § 

Strafford had foreseen this explosion, and entreated the king 
to dispense with his attending parliament. " He should not 

* Clarendon. t Pari. Hist., ii., 651 ; Clarendon. 

X Rapin, ix., 21. § Clarendon ; Neal, ii., 329. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 113 

be able to do his majesty any service there," he wrote to him, 
" but should rather be a means to hinder his affairs ; in re- 
gard he foresaw that the great envy and ill will of the par- 
liament and of the Scots would be bent against him. Whereas, 
if he kept out of sight, he would not be so much in their 
mind, as he should be by showing himself in parliament ; 
and if they should fall upon him, he being at a distance, 
whatsoever they should conclude against him, he might the 
better avoid, and retire from any danger, having the liberty 
of being out of their hands, and to go over to Ireland, or to 
some other place where he might be most serviceable to his 
majesty." But the king being very earnest for Strafford's 
coming, laid his commands upon him, and told him, " that as 
he was king of England he was able to secure him from any 
danger, and that parliament should not touch one hair of his 
head."* Strafford still hesitated, but upon a second invita- 
tion, braving the storm, since it was inevitable, he set out 
with the resolution of himself accusing before the upper 
house, on proofs recently collected, the principal members of 
the house of commons, of having excited and aided the Scot- 
tish invasion. Aware of the blow he was about to strike, 
Pym and his friends struck first. On the 9th of November, 
Strafford arrived in London ; on the lOth, fatigue and fever 
confined him to his bed ; on the 11th, the house of commons 
closed their doors, and, on the motion of Pym, abruptly im- 
peached him for high treason. Lord Falkland alone, though 
an enemy of Strafford's, said that delay and some examina- 
tion seemed required by the justice and dignity of the house. 
" The least delay may lose everything," said Pym ; " if the 
earl talk but once with the king, parliament will be dissolved ; 
besides, the house only impeaches : it is not the judge." And 
he proceeded immediately, with a committee, to lay the ac- 
cusation before the lords. f 

Strafford was at this time with the king. At the first inti- 
mation, he hastened to the upper house, where Pym had pre- 
ceded him. He found the doors closed, and angrily rebuked 

* Whitelocke, 37. One would think Mr. Lingard (x., 207) had not 
seen this passage ; for he says it was only the friends of Strafford who 
advised him not to go to London, but that for his own part he did not 
Jiesitate an instant. 

t State Trials, iii., 1383. 
10* 



114 HISTORY OF THE 



the usher, Avho hesitated to admit him ; he was advancing up 
the hall to take his seat, when several voices called upon him 
to retire. The earl stopped, looked round, and, after a few 
minutes' hesitation, obeyed. Recalled an hour afterwards, 
he was directed to kneel at the bar : he was then informed 
that the lords had accepted his impeachment, and decided, on 
the demand of the commons, that he should be sent to the 
Tower. He attempted to speak, but the house refused to 
hear him, and the order of commitment was forthwith exe- 
cuted.* 

To the impeachment of Strafford almost immediately suc- 
ceeded that of Laud, a man less feared, but still more odious. 
A fanatic as sincere as stern, his conscience reproached him 
with nothing, and he was utterly astonished at the impeach- 
ment. " Not one man in the house of commons," he said, 
" does, in his heart, believe me a traitor." The earl of 
Essex sharply took up these words as insulting to the com- 
mons, who had accused him. Laud, still more surprised, 
made an apology, and begged to be treated according to the 
ancient usages of parliament. Lord Say expressed himself 
indignant that he should pretend to prescribe to them how 
they were to proceed. The archbishop, now thoroughly agi- 
tated, was silent, incapable of understanding other passions 
than his own, or of remembering that he had ever thus spoken 
to his enemies (Dec. 18).j" 

Two other ministers, the lord keeper Finch, and the secre- 
tary of state Windebank, had taken an equally active part in 
tyranny ; but the former, a crafty courtier, had foreseen what 
was coming, and for the last three months had applied himself, 
at his master's expense, in gaining the indulgence of the 
leaders of the opposition ; the other, a weak man, and of me- 
diocre understanding, inspired neither hatred nor fear. The 
commons, however, impeached both, though without any ex- 
hibition of passion, as if merely to satisfy the public demand. 
Windebank absconded. Lord Finch obtained permission to 
appear before the house, and there, in humble terms, but 
graceful manner, made an unmeaning apology (Dec. 21). 
The party was pleased with this, as the first homage paid by 
a minister of the crown to its power, and allowed him time to 

* State Trials, ill., 1384. t lb., iv., 319. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 115 

make his way beyond sea. Several members were astonished 
at this so partial justice ; but Pym and Hampden, skilful 
leaders, did not wish to discourage baseness on the part of 
their opponents.* Impeachments against two bishops, some 
theologians, and six judges, were also set on foot. But that 
of Strafford alone was followed up with ardor. A secret 
committee, invested with immense powers, was commissioned 
to scrutinize his whole life, to trace, in his words as well as 
in his acts, nay, even in the councils he had given, whether 
the king had adopted them or not, proofs of high treason. "j" A 
similar committee formed in Ireland, served as an auxiliary 
to that of the commons. The Scots concurred by a virulent 
declaration, hinting very unmistakably that their army would 
not leave the kingdom till justice had been done on their most 
cruel enemy. To popular hatred and fear, it did not seem 
too much that the three nations should be leagued against one 
prisoner.:}: 

Thus delivered from their adversaries, and preparing sig- 
nal vengeance against the only one they feared, the commons 
took possession of the government. They voted subsidies, 
but of insignificant amount, merely sufficient to supply the 
necessities of each day.§ Commissioners selected from their 
body, and named in the bill, were alone entrusted with their 
application. The custom duties, in like manner, were only 
voted for two months, and renewed from time to time. To 
meet the expenses, more considerable and more prompt re- 
venues were needed. The commons borrowed, but in their 
own name, from their partisans in the city, even from their 
own members, and on the sole security of their promise : thus 
originated public credit. || The king pressed the dismissal of 
the two armies, particularly that of the Scots, dwelling upon 
the burden their continuance in England imposed on the 
northern counties ; but the house had need of them,1I and felt 
in a position to induce the people to suffer this burden : 
" The Philistines are too strong for us still," said Mr. Strode: 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 686; Clarendon (Oxford, 1S07), i., 274, ii., 15, 
17 ; May, i., 86, 172 ; Whitelocke, 40. 

t Clarendon, i., 279. 

i lb., 297. The trial of Strafford forms the 8th volume of Rush- 
worth's collection ; I refer to it thus once for all. 

§ Pari. Hist., ii., 701. II Clarendon, ut sup. 

IT Baillie, Letters, i., 240. 



116 HISTORY OF THE 



" we cannot do without our allies." The king's importunities 
were eluded ; nay, in the distribution of the funds allotted 
for their pay, more favor was shown to the Scots than to the 
English troops, whose officers did not all inspire parliament 
with the same confidence.* Some of these took offence, but 
the house paid no heed to it. They did more : they resolved 
that the Scots had lent the English a brotherly assistance, that 
for the future they should be called brothers, and voted in 
their favor, as an indemnity and recompense, the sum of 
300,000Z. The negotiations for a definitive peace with Scot- 
land were conducted by a committee of parliament rather 
than by the king's council. The leaders of both houses, par- 
ticularly those of the commons, dined together every day at 
Mr. Pym's, at their own expense ; here they were joined by 
the Scottish commissioners, by the authors of the principal 
petitions, by the most influential men in the city ; here they 
discussed the affairs of both houses and of the state. f Such 
was the tendency of all powers to parliament, that the coun- 
cillors of the crown, incapable or afraid of deciding the 
slightest question of themselves, referred to it in everything, 
without its needing to make any demand to that effect. A 
Roman-catholic priest, Goodman, had been condemned to 
death ; the king, who dared not pardon him, placed his life 
at the disposal of the commons, the only means of saving it ; 
for, notwithstanding their passions, they manifested no desire 
for bloodshed (Feb., 1641). :j: The people had conceived a 
hatred for the queen's mother, Marie de Medicis, then a re- 
fugee in London : every day the multitude surrounded her 
house, loading her with insults and menaces. It was to the 
commons that the court applied to know whether she could 
remain in England, and how her safety should be cared for. 
They answered she had better depart, voted 10,000Z. for her 
journey, and their wish was immediately carried out (May).§ 
Decisions of the courts of law, long since pronounced, came 
under their jurisdiction, as well as the private affairs of the 
king and court. The condemnation of Prynne, Burton, Bast- 
wick, Leighton, and Lilburne, was declared illegal, and their 
liberation ordered (Nov. 7),|| together with a large indemnity, 

* Whitelocke, 46. f Clarendon, Mem. (1827), i., 90. 

t Pari. Hist., ii., 710; State Trials, iv., 59. 

§ Pari. Hist., ii., 788, 793 ; May, i., 108. |1 Pari. Hist, ii., 639, 731. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 117 

which, however, they never received ; the common fate of 
past merits, soon effaced by new deserts, new necessities. The 
joy of the public was tlieir only recompense : at the news of 
their return, a crowd of five thousand persons went to meet 
them ; everywhere, on their route, the streets were hung 
with flags and laurels, and all the men wore rosemary and 
bays in their hats.* The transports of the people, the weak- 
ness of the king, everything urged on the commons to take 
into their sole hands the reins of the state, everything con- 
curred to elevate them into sovereign power. 

Their first attempt at the reform of institutions manifestly 
proclaimed, if not their sovereignty, at least their complete 
independence. A bill was proposed (Jan. 19, 1641), which 
prescribed the calling of a new parliament, every three years 
at the most. If the king did not convoke one, twelve peers 
assembled at Westminster might summon one without his 
cooperation ; in default of this, the sheriffs and municipal 
officers were to proceed with the elections. If the sheriffs 
neglected to see to it, the citizens had a right to assemble and 
elect representatives. No parliament could be dissolved or 
adjourned without the consent of the two houses, till fifty days 
after its meeting ; and to the houses alone belonged the choice 
of their respective speaker.-)- At the first news of this bill, the 
king quitted the silence in which he had shut himself up, and 
assembling both houses at Whitehall (Jan. 23),:!^ ^^i*^' " I ^i^® 
to have frequent parliaments, as the best means to preserve that 
right understanding between me and my subjects, which I so 
earnestly desire. But to give power to sheriffs and constables, 
and I know not whom, to do my office, that I cannot yield 
to." The house only saw in these words, a new motive to 
press forward the adoption of the bill; none dared counsel 
the king to refuse it ; he yielded, but in doing so, thought it 
due to his dignity to show the extent of his displeasure. He 
said, " I do not know for what you can ask, that I can here- 
after make any question to yield unto you ; so far, truly, I 
have had no great encouragement to oblige you, for you have 
gone on in that which concerns yourselves, and not those 
things which merely concern the strength of this kingdom. 
You have taken the government almost to pieces, and I may 

* May, i., 80, 157 ; Whitelocke, 40. f Rushwovth, i., 3., 189. 

X Pali. Hist., ii., 710. 



118 HISTORY OF THE 



say, it is almost off its hinges. A skilful watchmaker, to 
make clean his watch, will take it asunder, and when it is put 
together again, it will go all the better,, so that he leave not 
out one pin of it. Now, as I have done all my part, you know 
what to do on yours." (Feb. 16, 1641.)* 

The houses passed a vote of thanks to the king, and forth- 
with proceeded in the work of reform, demanding, in succes- 
sive motions, the abolition of the star chamber, of the north 
court, of the ecclesiastical court of high commission, and of all 
the extraordinary tribunals. f 

No one opposed these proposals ; there was no debate, even ; 
the statement of grievances took its place. Even the men 
who began to fear a disorderly movement and the ulterior 
designs of the party, would not have dared to defend powers, 
odious through their acts, and in point of fact illegal, though 
several were invested with a legal existence. Political reform 
was the unanimous desire, without any reference to social 
condition or religious opinions ; no one as yet troubled him- 
self with calculations as to its precise consequences or extent. 
All concurred in it without questioning themselves as to their 
intentions and motives. Men of a soaring mind, of long and 
steady foresight, or already compromised by proceedings 
which the laws condemned, Hampden, Pym, Holies, Stapleton, 
contemplated the taking fi'om the crown its fatal prerogative, 
to transfer the government to the house, and to fix it there 
irremovably. This was in their eyes the country's right, 
and for the people as well as for themselves the only sure 
guarantee. But, impelled to this design still more from 
necessity than from any clearly conceived principle, sanctioned 
by public opinion, they proceeded towards its accomplishment 
without declaring it. Men following in their train, violent 
sectaries, members as yet obscure, though very active, Crom- 
well, Henry Marty n, from time to time gave utterance, as 
against the king or the form of government, to words of a more 
menacing character, but they seemed, at least in the house, 
without consideration or credit ; and even those who won- 
dered, or were indignant at their rugged violence, were not 
alarmed at it. The majority of the house flattered them- 
selves, that, after the destruction of abuses, they should re- 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 716. f lb., 717. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 119 

turn to the condition which they called that of old England, 
the power of the king supreme, but restricted by the periodical 
power of the two houses, within the limits of the law ; and 
meanwhile, they accepted, as a temporary necessity, the almost 
exclusive domination of the commons, more conformable, for 
that matter, than they themselves imagined, with the ideas and 
feelings, somewhat confused in their nature, which animated 
them. Thus political reform, equally desired by all, though 
with very diiferent views and hopes, was being accomplished 
with all the force of irresistible unanimity. 

In religious matters it was quite different. From the very 
first day, an utter diversity of opinions and wishes on this 
subject was apparent. A petition from the city of London, 
backed by 1.5,000 signatures, demanded the entire abolition of 
episcopacy. (Dec. 11, 1640.)* Nearly at the same moment, 
seven hundred ecclesiastics limited themselves to requiring 
the reform of the temporal power of the bishops, of their 
despotism in the church, of the administration of its revenues ; 
and soon after, there arrived, from various counties, nineteen 
petitions, signed, it is said, by more than 100,000 persons, 
recommending the maintenance of episcopal government. f 
Within the walls of parliament itself the same difference of 
views was manifested. The petition of the city was all but 
refused by the commons, being only admitted after a violent 
debate.:}: A bill was proposed, declaring all ecclesiastics in- 
capable of any civil function, and excluding the bishops from 
the house of lords ; but in order to induce the commons to 
adopt it (March 9 and 11, 1641), the presbyterian party were 
obliged to promise they would go no further ; on this condition 
alone did Hampden obtain the vote of lord Falkland ;§ but 
the bill, when it reached the lords, was rejected (May 24 and 
June 7). II Furious at this, the presbyterians demanded the 
destruction of bishoprics and deaneries and chapters (May 27) ;ir 
but the opposition was so warm that they resolved to postpone 
their motion. At one time, the two houses seemed agreed upon 
repressing the disorders that broke out on all sides in public 
worship, and on maintaining its legal forms (Jan. 16);** but, 
two days afterwards, their dissensions re-appeared. Of their 

* Rushworth, i., 3, 93. f Neal, ii., 356. J Baillie, Letters, i., 244. 
§ Clarendon, i., 366. || P. Hist., ii., 794—814. 

IT P Hist, S14 ; Clarendon, i., 368. ** Neal, ii., p. 3-39. • 



120 HISTORY OF THE 



sole authority, without even informing the lords, the commons 
sent commissioners into the counties to carry off from the 
churches the images, altars, crucifixes, and all the other relics 
of idolatry (Jan. 23) ;* and these messengers sanctioned by 
their presence the popular passions, the outbreak of which 
had preceded them. On their side, the lords, learning that 
the independents had publicly resumed their meetings (Jan. 
18), summoned their leaders to the bar (Jan. 19), f and re, 
proved them, though but timidly. No opinion, no intention 
on this subject, was really predominant or national. Among 
the partisans of episcopacy, some, small in number, but ani- 
mated with the energy of faith or the pertinacity of personal 
interest, maintained its pretensions to divine right ; others, 
looking upon it as a human institution, deemed it essential to 
monarchy, and thought the throne compromised by the power 
of the bishops suffering any serious blow ; others, and these 
were numerous, would willingly, while excluding the bishops 
from public affairs, have retained them at the head of the 
church, as tradition, the laws, and state convenience seemed 
to them to require. Iji the opposite party, opinions were no 
less various ; some were attracted to episcopacy by habit, 
although their notions were not favorable to it ; according 
to many of the most enlightened, no church constitution ex- 
isted by divine right, or possessed absolutely legitimacy ; it 
might vary according to time and place ; the parliament was 
at liberty always to alter it, and public interest ought alone to 
decide the fate of episcopacy, respecting whose abolition or 
maintenance there was no fixed principle. But the presby- 
terians and their ministers saw in the episcopal system an 
idolatiy condemned by the gospel, at once the successor and 
forerunner of popery ; they repelled, with all the indignation 
of zealous faith, its liturgy, its form of worship, its most re- 
mote consequences ; and reclaimed for the republican consti- 
tution of the church, the divine right which the bishops had 
usurped. 

For some time after the first successes of political reform, 
these dissensions impeded the progress of parliament. As soon 
as religious questions came under discussion, the adversaries 
of the court, hitherto unanimous, became divided, nay, op- 

*Neal, ii., 343-. t lb., 342. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 121 

posed each other ; the majority often varied, and no party- 
presented itself which was on every occasion animated by the 
same spirit, devoted to the same designs, and capable of mas- 
tering the other sections. Pym, Hampden, the leading chiefs 
of the political party, took care to spare the presbyterians, 
and supported even their most daring motions ; yet it was 
well known that they did not share their fanatical passions, 
and that what they had at heart was rather to reduce the tem- 
poral power of the bishops than to alter the constitution of 
the church,* and that in the upper house, among the most 
popular lords, the establishment had numerous partisans. A 
few prudent men advised the king to take advantage of these 
dissensions, and to prevent the union of the political and re- 
ligious reformers, by boldly confiding to the former the affairs 
of the crown. 

Negotiations were accordingly opened. The marquis of 
Hamilton, always earnest to interpose between the parties, 
was the most active agent in conducting them ; the earl of 
Bedford, a moderate man, influential in the upper house, and 
iTiuch esteemed by the public, took a dignified share in them. 
The leaders of both houses often assembled at his house ; he 
possessed their confidence, and seemed authorized to treat in 
their name. The king, who consented earlier than he him- 
self could have wished, first formed a new privy council,")' to 
which lords Bedford, Essex, Warwick, Say, Kimbolton, and 
some others were summoned ; all of them of the popular party, 
some even ardently engaged in the opposition, but all high 
in rank. The pride of Charles, already wounded at bending 
even before them, did not permit him to carry the admission of 
his defeat lower in the scale. But the point was insisted on ; 
the new councillors would not be separated from their friends : 
each day more clearly manifested to the king the importance 
of those leaders of the commons whom he regarded with such 
bitter disdain. They, on their side, without rejecting the 
overtures made them, manifested little eagerness in the matter, 
less, however, from indifference than from perplexity : by 
accepting, they would, indeed, attain the principal aim of all 
endeavors ; they would, in the name of the country, achieve 
legal possession of power, impose a ministry upon the crown, 

* Clarendon, ut sup. t lb., i., 302. 

< 11 



122 HISTORY OF THE 



and subject the king to the counsels of parliament ; but then 
he required them to save Straflbrd and the church ; in other 
words, to set at liberty their most formidable enemy, and to 
break with the presbyterians, their warmest friends. On both 
sides the perplexity was great, and distrust already too deep 
to yield so soon to ambition or to fear. At length, however, 
direct and precise proposals were made. Pym was to be 
chancellor of the exchequer, Hampden tutor to the prince of 
Wales, Holies secretary of state ; St. John was at once ap- 
pointed attorney-general. The ministry was to have for its 
leader the earl of Bedford, with the title of lord high treasurer. 
The previous occupants of these various offices had tendered 
or already given in their resignation.* 

But during these negotiations, carried on by both parties 
with little hope, perhaps also without any warm desire of 
success, other proposals reached the king, far more adapted 
to his feelings. Discontent had spread in the army ; several 
officers, members of the lower house, too, had openly expressed 
it. " If," said one of them (commissary Wilmot) in the house, 
" all the Scotch have to do to get their money is to demand it, 
the English soldiers will know how to follow the example.""]* 
A report of this feeling soon reached the ears of the queen ; 
her favorite, Henry Jermyn, established a connexion with 
the malcontents, and by his means she received them at White- 
hall, and expressed her deep sympathy with their situation, 
the same, said she, though far less sad, far less perilous, with 
that of the king. Lively and ingratiating in her manners, 
placing her whole hope in them, she had little difficulty in 
persuading them that they held the destiny of the state in 
their hands. Secret conferences were established, in the 
course of which all sorts of plans were brought forward. 
Some proposed that the army should march to London, and 
forthwitli deliver the king from his bondage ; others, more 
sagacious, merely proposed that it should address to parliament 
a petition expressing its devotion to the king and the church ; 
declaring, that, in ils opinion, the reformation of the state was 
completed, and requiring a stop to be put to innovation. Aid 
from abroad was also discussed, levies in Portugal, France ; 
frivolous notions, without any result, but confidently advanced 

* Clarendon, ii., 73, &c. ; Whitelocke, 41 ; Sidnev Papers, ii., GG4. 
t Whitelocke, 46. . 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 123 

by hare-brained men, perhaps just risen from the dinner-table, 
and at all events more intent upon pushing themselves forward 
than upon the success of the cause. In connexion with these 
palace cabalings, there were, in the army itself, «ome intrigues, 
more active than efficacious. The malcontents came to and 
fro between the camp and London, and short manuscript pam- 
phlets circulated in the cantonments. The king himself had, 
after awhile, an interview with Percy, brother to the earl of 
Northumberland, and one of the conspirators ; he discounte- 
nanced, by Percy's advice, all violent projects, all idea of 
bringing the army to London ; but the copy of a petition was 
submitted to him, as menacing to the parliament as those daily 
received by the commons were to the crown and the church. 
He approved of it, and to give influence to the leaders of the 
enterprise, suffered himself to be persuaded to affix his initials 
to it, in sign of assent.* 

The plot continued without advancing ; the petition was not 
presented, but nothing escapes the distrust of a nation, and 
once their jealousy is excited, they regard designs as acts, 
words as designs. In public places, in taverns, a multitude 
of voluntary spies collected the imprudent remarks of the 
officers, and reported them to Pym, who had the superintend- 
ence of this department. Ere long, treachery revealed more ; 
Goring, one of the conspirators, discovered the whole to the 
earl of Bedford. Nothing had been done, but the king had 
allowed himself to listen to propositions involving the worst 
that was to be feared. The leaders of the commons kept this 
discovery to themselves, waiting for some great occasion'}" to 
make good use of it ; they did not even break off the negotia- 
tions, still carried on in the king's name with reference to their 
appointment to office. But, from that moment, all hesitation 

* May, i., 97 ; Clarendon, i., 401 ; ii., 132 ; Whitelocke, 45 ; Rush- 
worth, 'i., 3, 252. 

t Mr. Brodie denies this fact (iii., 109), and thinks that Goring did 
not reveal the plot, till in the course of the month of April, 1641. 
This is, indeed, what might be concluded from Husband's Collection, 
p. 195, &c. ; but an attentive examination of the whole of this intrigue, 
and a comparison of the different passages indicated in the preceding 
note, prove, to my mind, that the meetings of the ofBcers commenced 
in the beginning of the winter of 1641, and that Pym and his friends 
had notice of them in the beginning of March. This is also the 
opinion of Mr. Lingard, x., 128, note 27. 



124 HISTORY OF THE 



disappeared from their councils ; they united themselves closely 
with the fanatic presbyterians, the only party whose co-ope- 
ration was sure, whose devotion was inexhaustible, for they 
alone had fixed principles, ardent passions, a revolution" to ac- 
complish, and popular force to accomplish it with. Meantime, 
the destruction of Strafford was irrevocably resolved, and his 
trial began (March 22). 

The whole house of commons insisted upon being present 
to support the impeachment. With them sat, for the same 
purpose, commissioners from Scotland and Ireland. Eighty 
peers acted as judges ; the bishops upon a desire to that ef- 
fect very decidedly expressed by the comipons, declined being 
present, as is indeed the case always in trials for life or death. 
Above the peers, in a closed gallery, sat the king and queen, 
anxious to see all that passed, but desirous of concealing, the 
one his anguish, the other her curiosity. Around, in galleries 
and on raised steps, was a crowd of spectators, of both sexes, 
nearly all of high rank, already affected by the pomp of the 
spectacle, the importance of the trial, and the well-known' 
character of the accused.* 

Brought by water from the Tower to Westminster, the 
prisoner passed through the multitude assembled at the doors, 
without confusion or insult ; despite the general hatred, his 
so recent greatness, his deportment, the very terror lately 
attached to his name, still commanded respect. As he pro- 
ceeded on, his form prematurely bowed by sickness but his eye 
glittering and haughty as in his youth, the crowd made way 
and uncovered, and he saluted them with courtesy, regarding 
this demeanor of the people as a good omen."!" Hope had not 
failed him ; he despised his adversaries, had well studied their 
charges, and did not doubt he should clear himself of the crime 
of high treason. The accusation of the Irish alone had for a 
moment astounded him ; he could not understand how a king- 
dom till then so submissive — nay, so eager to flatter and to 
serve him, could thus so suddenly have changed. 

The second day, an incident showed him that he had mis- 
understood his situation and the difficulties of his defence : " I 
hope," said he, " I shall easily repel the imputations of my 
malicious enemies." At these words, Pym, who was managing 

* May, i., 92 ; State Trials, iii., 1414. f State Trials, iii,, 1417. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 125 

the trial, angrily took him up. " It is to the commons this 
insult is addressed : and I pronounce it a crime thus to charge 
them with malicious enmity." Strafford, agitated at this, fell 
upon his knees, apologized, and from that moment, perfectly 
calm and self-possessed, allowed to escape him not one sign of 
anger or even of impatience, not a word which could be turned 
against him.* 

For seventeen days, he, unaided, against thirteen accusers 
who relieved one another, argued the charges which they 
brought forward. A great many were incontestably proved, 
convicting him of injustice and tyranny. But others, fool- 
ishly exaggerated or blindly credited by hatred, were easily 
repelled, and none, in truth, came within the legal definition 
of high treason. Strafford applied all his efforts to dispossess 
them of this character, speaking with magnanimity of his 
imperfections, of his frailties, opposing a modest dignity to the 
violence of his adversaries, and proving, without contumely, 
the passion-born illegality of their proceedings. Disgraceful 
obstacles impeded his defence ; his counsel, obtained with great 
difficulty, and despite the commons, were not allowed to speak 
as to facts, nor to examine the witnesses ; permission to bring 
forward witnesses for the defence was not granted him till 
three days before the trial commenced, though most of them 
were in Ireland. At every opportunity, he claimed his right, 
thanked his judges if they consented to acknowledge it, made 
no complaint when they refused, and simply replied to his 
enemies, who were angry at the delays created by his able 
defence : " 1 have as much right, I believe, to defend my life, 
as others have to assail it." 

So much energy embarrassed and humiliated the accusers. 
Twice (March 25, April 9), the commons summoned the lords 
to proceed more rapidly with a trial, which, they said, caused 
them to lose time highly precious to the country."!" The lords 
refused ; the success of the accused gave them back a little 
energy. When the case for the prosecution was over, before 
Strafford's counsel had opened their lips, or he himself had 
resumed his defence, the impeachment committee felt them- 
selves conquered, at least as to the proof of high treason. 
The excitement of the commons became extreme : favored by 

* State Trials, iii., 1420. t Pari. Hist., ii., 743, 

11* 



126 HISTORY OF THE 



the letter of the law and his own fatal genius, this great cri- 
minal, then, was about to escape them, and reform, scarcely 
born, would once more have to sustain the attack of its most 
dangerous enemy. A sudden and bold stroke was resolved 
upon. Sir Arthur Haslerig, a hard, coarse-minded man, pro- 
posed to declare Strafford guilty and to condemn him by act 
of parliament (April 10, 1641). This proceeding, which 
dispensed the judges from all law, was not without example, 
though its precedents all belonged to periods of tyranny, and 
had even been denounced soon after their occurrence, as ini- 
quitous. Some notes found among the papers of the secretary 
of state. Vane, and given to Pym by his son,* were produced 
as supplementary proof sufficient to make out high treason. 
They imputed to Strafford that he had advised the king, in 
open council, to employ the Irish army to quell England, 
The words they attributed to him, though contradicted by the 
evidence of several members of the council, and in them- 
selves susceptible of a less odious interpretation, were too 
conformable with his general conduct, and with the maxims 
he had often declared, not to produce a strong impression on 
all minds. The bill immediately obtained a first reading. 
Some thought they were sacrificing the law to justice, others 
justice to necessity. 

All this while the trial went on, for the commons would not 
give up any chance against the accused, nor allow the peril 
of the act of parliament to release him from that of the legal 
judgment. Before his counsel began to speak on the ques- 
tion of law, Strafford resumed his defence (April 13), he 
spoke long and with marvellous eloquence, applying himself 
to prove that by no law could any one of his actions be charged 
as high treason. Conviction every moment grew stronger in 
the minds of his judges, and he ably followed its progress, 
adapting his words to the impressions he saw springing up, 
deeply agitated, but not allowing his emotion to keep him from 
perceiving and marking what was passing around him. " My 
lords," he said, in conclusion, " these gentlemen tell me they 
speak in defence of the commonwealth against my arbitrary 
laws ; give me leave to say it, I speak in defence of the com- 

* His name was Harry Vane, the same as his father's. It is he who 
will always be referred to hereafter as one of the leaders of the inde- 
pendent party. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 127 

monwealth, against their arbitrary treason. . . . My lords, do 
we not live by laws, and must we be punished by laws before 
they be made ? My lords, if this crime, which they call 
arbitrary treason, had been marked by any discerner of the 
law, the ignorance thereof should be no excuse for me ; but 
if it be no law at all, how can it in rigor or strictness itself 
condemn me ? Beware you do not wake these sleeping lions, 
by the searching out some neglected moth-eaten records ; they 
may one day tear you and your posterity to pieces. It was 
your ancestors' care to chain them up within the barricadoes 
of statutes ; be not you ambitious to'be more skilful and curi- 
ous than your forefathers in the art of killing. For my poor 
self, were it not for your lordships' interest, and the interest 
of a saint in heaven, who had left me those sacred pledges on 
earth," — at this his breath stopped, and he shed tears abun- 
dantly on mentioning his wife, but looking up again immedi- 
ately, he continued — " I should never take the pains to keep 
up this ruinous cottage of mine ; it is laden with such infii-mi- 
ties, that, in truth, I have no great pleasure to carry it about 
with me any longer." Again he stopped, as if seeking an 
idea : " My lords, — my lords, — my lords, something more I 
had to say, but my voice and spirits fail me ; only I do, in all 
humility and submission, cast myself down before your lord- 
ships' feet ; and whether your judgment in my case be either 
for life or death, it shall be righteous in my eyes, and received 
with a Te Deum laudamus.'''' 

The auditory were seized with pity and admiration. Pym 
was about to answer ; Strafford looked at him ; menace 
gleamed in the immobility of his mien ; his pale and pro- 
truded lip bore the expression of passionate scorn ; Vjra was 
agitated, and paused ; his hands trembled, and he sought with- 
out finding it a paper which was just before his eyes. It was 
the answer he had prepared, and which he read without being 
listened to by any one, himself hastening to finish an harangue 
foreign to the feelings of the assembly, and which he had 
great difficulty in delivering.* 

Emotion passes away, anger remains ! that of Pym and his 
friends was at its height. They hastened the second reading 
of the bill of attainder (April 14). In vain did Selden, the 

* State Trials, iii., 1469. 



128 HISTORY OF THE 



oldest and most illustrious of the defenders of liberty, Hol- 
borne, one of Hampden's counsel in the affair of shipmoney, 
and several others,* oppose it. It was now the only resource 
of the party ; for they clearly saw that the lords would not 
condemn Strafford as judges and in the name of the law. 
They even wished the trial to be at once suspended, that 
Strafford's counsel should not be heard ; and such was their 
violence, that they talked of summoning to the bar and pun- 
ishing " those insolent counsel who dared to undertake the 
defence of a man whom the house had declared guilty of high 
treason." The lords I'esisted these outrageous propositions ; 
Strafford's counsel were heard, but the commons did not an- 
swer them, did not even go to hear them, saying it was beneath 
their dignity to dispute with lawyers ; and four days after, 
notwithstanding the active opposition of lord Digby, till then 
one of Strafford's most furious assailants, the bill of attainder 
passed its third reading (Apr. 21). f 

At this intelligence the afflicted king only thought how he 
might save the earl, no matter at what price : " Be sure," he 
wrote to him, " on my royal word, that you shall not suffer, 
either in your life, or in your fortune, or in your honor." 
Every engine was set at work with all the blind haste of fear 
and grief. The chiefs of the commons were offered all sorts 
of concessions ; a plot was concerted for the escape of the pri- 
soner. But the plot injured the negotiations, the negotiations 
the plot. The earl of Bedford, who appeared disposed to some 
compliance, died suddenly. The earl of Essex, in answer to 
Hyde, who was speaking of the insurmountable resistance 
that the king's conscience would oppose to the bill, said : — 
" The king is obliged to conform himself and his own under- 
standing to the advice and conscience of his parliament.":]: 
Sir William Balfour, the governor of the Tower, was offered 
20,000Z. and one of Strafford's daughters in marriage for his 
5on, if he would aid his escape ; he refused. He was or- 
dered to receive into the prison, under the name of guards, a 
hundred chosen men, commanded by Captain Billingsley, a 
discontented officer ; he informed the commons of the offer 
and of the order. Every day witnessed the formation and 
failure of some new plan for the preservation of the earl. At 

* State Trials, iii., 1469. t Clarendon, i., 359, et passim, 

t lb., i., 377. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 129 

last, the king, contrary to Strafford's own judgment, caused 
both houses to be summoned, and, acknowledging the earl's 
faults and promising that he would never employ him again, 
not even as a constable, declared, at the same time, that no 
argument, no fear, would ever make him consent to his death 
(May 1). 

But the hatred of the commons was inflexible, and more 
daring than the king's grief: they had foreseen his resistance, 
and prepared the means of overcoming it. Ever since the 
bill of attainder had been carried to the upper house, the mul- 
titude assembled daily round Westminster Hall, armed with 
swords, knives, and sticks, shouting, " Justice ! Justice !" and 
menacing the lords who delayed their vote.* Arundelf was 
obliged to get out of his carriage, and, hat in hand, beg of the 
multitude to retire, undertaking to press the accomplishment 
of their wishes. Fifty-nine members of the commons had 
voted against the bill ; their names were placarded in the 
streets, with these words : Here are the Strajfordians, traitors to 
their country ! The pulpit sent forth similar denunciations ; 
the ministers preached and prayed for the punishment of a 
great delinquent. The lords, acting upon a message from the 
king, complained of these disorders to the commons (May 3), 
the commons returned no answer.:}; Yet the bill still remained 
in suspense. A decisive blow, kept in reserve for such an 
occasion, was resolved upon : Pym, summoning fear to the 
aid of vengeance, from his place in the house, denounced the 
plot of the court and the officers to raise the army against the 
parliament (May 3).§ Some of those implicated absconded, 
which confirmed every suspicion. A wild terror took posses- 
sion of the house and of the people. It was resolved that the 
doors should be closed, and that all members' letters should be 
opened (May 11). || Absurd alarms still further added to the 
agitation of men's minds. A report was spread in the city 
(May 15) that the house of commons, having been undermined, 
was about to be blown up ; the militia took to their arms ; an 
immense multitude rushed to Westminster. Sir Walter Earl 
hastened to inform the house of the rumor ; as he was speak- 
ing, Mr. Middleton and Mr. Moyle, remarkably corpulent 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 755 ; Whitelocke, 45. 

t Lord Montgomery, according to Whitelocke, ib. 

X Pari. Hist., ii., 778. § lb., 776. || lb., 788. 



130 HISTORY OF THE 



men, rose suddenly to listen to him ; the floor creaked : " The 
house is blowing up !" cried several of the members, rushing 
out of the hall, which was immediately thronged with the 
populace ; and there was another scene of the same nature in 
the course of the week.* In the midst of so much excite- 
ment, measures skilfully planned were establishing the empire 
of the commons and the success of their designs. In imita- 
tion of the Scottish covenant, an oath of union, for the defence 
of the protestant religion and the public liberties, was taken 
by both houses ; the commons even wished to extend it to the 
people ; and on the lords declining to sanction this, declared 
whoever should refuse to take it incapable of holding any office 
in church or state. f Finally, to secure the future from any 
peril, a bill was proposed, declaring that this parliament could 
not be dissolved without its own consent (May 7).^ Even 
this daring measure scarcely occasioned any surprise ; the 
necessity of giving a guarantee to loans, now, it was said, 
more difficult to obtain than ever, served as a pretext ; the 
general excitement stifled all objection. The lords attempted 
to amend the bill, but in vain : the upper house was con- 
quered ; and the judges now extended to its weakness the 
sanction of their own cowardice ; they declared that within 
the meaning of the law the crimes of Strafford really consti- 
tuted high treason. § The bill of attainder was submitted to a 
last debate : thirty-four of the lords who had attended the trial 
absented themselves ; among those present, twenty-six voted 
for the bill, nineteen against it (May 7),|j nothing more was 
Heeded but the king's consent. 

Charles still resisted, thinking himself incapable of such 
dishonor. He sent for Holies, Strafford's brother-in-law, and 
who, on this ground, had taken no part in the prosecution. 
" What can be dojae to save him ?" he asked, with anguish. 
Holies advised that Strafford should solicit the king for a 
reprieve, and that the king should go in person to present his 
petition to parliament, in a speech which Holies himself drew 
up on the spot : at the same time, he promised to do all in his 
power to induce his friends to be satisfied with the earl's 
banishment : the matter thus arranged, they parted. Already, 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 783. t lb., 778 ; Neal, ii., 382. 

t Clarendon, i., 409 ; Whitelocke, 45 ; Pari. Hist, ii., 786. 
§ Pari. Hist, ii., 737. || lb. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 131 

it is said, the efforts of Holies had met with some success, 
when the queen, ever hostile to Strafford, alarmed at the out- 
breaks of the people, each day more violent, and moreover, it 
is reported, fearing, from the information of some of her con- 
fidants, that to save his life, the earl had engaged to reveal all 
he knew of her intrigues, came and beset the king with her 
suspicions and terrors :* her alarm was so great that she 
wished to fly, to return to France, and she was already making 
preparations for her depai'ture.f Moved by the tears of his 
wife, incapable of deciding for himself, Charles first assem- 
bled a privy council, and then the bishops. Juxon, bishop of 
London, alone counselled him to obey his conscience ; all the 
others, the bishop of Lincoln, in particular, an intriguing 
prelate, long opposed to the court, urged him to sacrifice an 
individual to the throne, his conscience as a man to his con- 
science as a king.i He had scarce quitted the council 
chamber, when a letter from Strafford was delivered to him 
(May 9) : " Sire," wrote the earl, " after a long and hard 
struggle, I have come to the only resolution befitting me ; all 
private interest should give way to the happiness of your 
sacred person, and of the state. I entreat you to remove, by 
attending to this bill, the obstacle which prevents a happy 
concord between you and your subjects. Sire, my consent 
herein shall acquit you more to God than all the world can 
do beside. To a willing man there is no injury done. By 
God's grace, my soul, about to quit this body, forgives all men 
all things, with infinite contentment. I only ask that you 
would grant to my poor son and his three sisters, as much 
kindness, neither more nor less, as their unfortunate father 
shall be deemed to merit, according as he shall one day ere 
long be held guilty or innocent. "§ 

The next day, the secretary of state, Carleton, went, on 
the part of the king, to inform Strafford that he had consented 
to the fatal bill. (May 10.) The earl seemed somewhat sur- 
prised, and, for his only answer, raising his hands to heaven, 

* Burnet's Own Times. 

t See a letter of M. de Montreuil, the French minister, dated the 
23d May, 1641 ; Mazure, Hist, de la Revolution de 1688, iii., 422. 
t Clarendon, i., 398. § State Trials, iii., 1516. 



132 HISTORY OF THE 



exclaimed, " Nolite confidere principibus et filiis hominum, 
quia non est salus in illis."* 

Instead of going in person, as he had promised Holies, to 
beg a reprieve of parliament, the king contented himself with 
sending by the prince of Wales, a letter, which concluded 
with this postscript, " If he must die, it would be a charity to 
spare him till Saturday." The houses read the letter twice, 
and without noticing this cold request, ordered the execution 
for the next day. (May 11.) 

The governor of the Tower, who was to accompany Straf- 
ford,'!' urged him to take a carriage, to escape the violence of 
the people : " No, Master lieutenant," answered he, " I dare 
look death in the face, and I hope the people too. Have you 
a care that I do not escape, and I care not how I die, whether 
by the hand of the executioner, or by the madness and fury 
of the people ; if that may give them better content, it is all 
one to me :" and he went out on foot, preceding the guards, 
and looking around on all sides, as if he had been marching 
at the head of an army. As he passed the chamber where 
Laud was imprisoned, he stopped ; the evening before he had 
sent to request him to be at the window, and to bless him 
on his way : " My lord," he bowed and said, " your prayers 
and your blessing." The archbishop extended his arms to- 
wards him, but of a mind less firm than his friend's, and that 
enervated by age, he fell back senseless. " Farewell, my 
lord," said Strafford, as he moved on, " God protect your in- 
nocency !" Arrived at the scaffold, he ascended without hesi- 
tation, followed by his brother, the ministers of the church, 
and several of his friends, knelt down an instant, then rose 
and addressed the people : " I desii'e," said he, " for this king- 
dom, every earthly prosperity ; while I lived, this was my 
constant endeavor ; dying, it is my only wish. But I entreat 
each and all of you, who listen to me, to examine yourselves 
seriously, your hands on your hearts, whether the beginning 
reformation of a kingdom should be written in characters of 
blood ; think over this when you go to your homes. Never 
let me be so unhappy, that the least drop of my blood should 
rise up in judgment against any of you ; but I fear you are 

* " Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them 
there is no salvation." — Whitelocke, 46. ' 



t Pari. Hist., ii., 760. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 133 

in a wrong way." He knelt down again, and prayed for a 
quarter of an hour ; then, turning to his friends, he took leave 
of them all, shaking hands with each, and giving each some 
advice. " Now," said he, " I have nigh done ! one stroke 
will make my wife husbandless, my dear children fatherless, 
and my poor servants masterless, and will separate me from 
my dear brother and all my friends ! But let God be to you 
and them all in all !" As he disrobed, " I thank God," added 
he, " I am not afraid of death, nor daunted with any discou- 
ragement rising from my fears ; but do as cheerfully put off 
my doublet at this time as ever I did when I went to bed." 
He called the executioner, forgave him, prayed an instant, 
laid his head on the block, and gave the signal himself. His 
head fell ; the executioner held it up to the people, saying, 
" God save the king !" Violent acclamations burst forth ; 
several bands of men spread through the city, celebrating 
their victory with loud ' shouts ; but others retired silently, 
filled with doubt and uneasiness as to the justice of the wish 
they had just seen fulfilled.* 

Disturbed by the exhibition of the latter feeling, the com- 
mons did all in their power to repress it ; nothing more 
irritates conquerors than to find a dead enemy still dangerous. 
Mr. Taylor, for having said, in private conversation, that they 
had committed a murder with the sword of justice, was sent 
to the Tower, expelled the house, and declared incapable of 
ever taking his seat again (May 27). f Lord Digby had pub- 
lished his speech against the bill of attainder ; the house for- 
bade its circulation, and had it burnt by the common hang- 
man (July 13).:}: Never had their strength appeared so 
great, so firmly established ; the king consenting to the death 
of the earl, had also adopted, almost without looking at it, the 
bill which deprived him of the right of dissolving parliament 
without its own consent. Yet the commons still needed secu- 
rity ; and the more their power increased, the more they felt 
impelled towards tyranny. The king, in delivering up Straf- 
ford to them, had lowered himself in their eyes, but given 
them no greater confidence in him, and hatred, still deeper 
than before, redoubled their mistrust. A royalist party, be- 
sides that of the court, began, moreover, to form amongst them. 

* State Trials, ill., 1521 ; Warwick's Mem. (1702), 164. 
t Pari. Hist., ii., 815. t lb., 754. 

12 



134 HISTOEY OF THE 



Pym, Hampden and Holies found themselves obliged to ally 
themselves more and more closely with the sectaries, and this 
alliance displeased even the warm friends of liberty. " To 
what purpose," they asked, " embarrass political reform with 
doubtful questions 1 In matters of worship and discipline, 
opinion differs ; against absolute power, England is unani- 
mous ; that is the only enemy we should hunt down without 
mercy." Sometimes this view of things prevailed, and the 
house, resuming the examination of grievances, recovered its 
unanimity. The abolition of the star chamber, of the north- 
ern court, the court of high commission, of all arbitrary tribu- 
nals, was definitively pronounced, and the king, after two 
days' hesitation, gave his assent (July 5).* Political reform, 
such, at least, as it had at first been wished for and conceived, 
seemed accomplished ; but to what purpose set it down in 
statutes, if the carrying it out was to be left to its enemies ? 
The king's hesitation, the rumors of plots, the defections per- 
ceived or foreseen in the army and the parliament, awakened 
alarm ; to lose power, the parliamentary leaders felt would 
be to ruin themselves and their cause ; to retain it, the assist- 
ance of the people was necessary, and the people, devoted to 
the presbyterians, claimed in its turn a share of the triumph. 
All the motions against the church re-appeared ; the Scots 
even began openly to solicit for uniformity of worship in the 
two countries. These attempts once more failed ; and then 
ill success, the perplexity into which both houses were 
thrown by so many passions and heterogeneous designs, gave 
to their proceedings an appearance of uncertainty and weari- 
ness, out of which some promised themselves repose. But the 
religious struggle became more and more decided ; the sec- 
taries grew bolder, the church was more and more shaken. 
Even in the upper house, her firmest support, everything at- 
tested her decline : the spiritual lords were no longer, accord- 
ing to ancient custom, mentioned separately at the head of the 
bills ; the clerk of the house, when reading them, affected to 
turn his back to the bench of bishops, and in public ceremo- 
nies the temporal lords assumed the precedence. f These 
symptoms did not escape the presbyterian party, who inces- 
santly renewed their attacks, took the lead of the political re- 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 853. t Neal, ii„ 410, 411 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 135 

formers, whom they maintained in the possession of power, 
and, notwithstanding apparent reverses, daily advanced towards 
success. 

The king, all at once, recalled to mind his project of visit- 
ing Scotland, where the execution of the treaty of peace, at 
last about to be concluded, called, he said, for his presence. 
At the same time it was stated that the queen, giving out ill 
health as the pretext, was preparing to depart for the conti- 
nent. The malcontent army lay on the road the king would 
take, and the queen's connexions with the continent had long 
been matter of suspicion. This double journey, sudden and 
simultaneous, gave distrust the fuel it required. Its doubts 
were quite legitimate. Without power or influence in Lon- 
don, surrounded by useless courtiers and panic-struck coun- 
cillors, Charles had turned his thoughts towards the kingdom 
of his fathers, and the absolute monarchs of Europe. In Scot- 
land, he intended, by yielding all demands, both as to church 
and state, to gain the good- will of the people, and to load the 
lords with favors. In the army, a visit from him, and the 
conciliatory deportment he contemplated, could not fail to in- 
crease the number of his partisans. As to the continent, his 
views were less precise ; but without imagining or even fore- 
seeing war, he already sought money and allies. The com- 
mons did not give utterance to their suspicions ; but they re- 
quired that the queen should not leave London, and that the 
king should defer his departure (June 26). Charles exhibited 
some displeasure at this, affecting to regard the request as an 
unmeaning caprice. To make it supposed that he attached 
no importance to his answer, he referred the commons for it 
to the Scottish commissioners, who, he said, solicited him to 
hasten his journey, and to the queen herself. The Scots wil- 
lingly agreed to a delay ; and the queen readily promised not 
to depart.* Reassured for a moment, the commons pressingly 
urged the disbanding of the army, hitherto purposely retarded. 
Letters from the house guaranteed the troops the prompt pay- 
ment of their demands. To provide for this, some zealous 
citizens had their plate melted ; fresh loans were ordered, new 
taxes imposed. f But the disbanding proceeded slowly, from 

*Parl. Hist., ii., 846. et seq. 

t May, i., 105 ; Pari. Hist., ii., 841. The interest demanded for this 
loan was fixed at ten per cent. 



l36 HISTORY OF THE 



the want of money, and also from the difficulties interposed by 
many of the officers.* The king secretly congratulated him- 
self upon this circumstance ; it made the commons resume 
their anxieties. The delay agreed upon had now expired. 
The commons solicited another, but without success (Aug. 
8) ;•[■ the king announced that he was about to depart. The 
house started the project of demanding that a regent should be 
appointed during his absence, that public business might not 
be suspended ; but the idea was not acted upon.;]: The king 
contented himself with naming the earl of Essex captain- 
general south of Trent, and departed on the 10th of August, 
full of hopes which he could not help giving vague utterance 
to, but of which no one could conceive the grounds. 

The house was not long in perceiving that they only lost 
time by sitting uncertain and inactive during his absence. It 
was much more important to them to watch closely their ad- 
versaries, and to refresh the zeal of their partisans in the 
counties. After a fortnight of barren sittings, they resolved to 
adjourn (Aug. 27). § Many of the members wished to look 
after their private concerns, or to take some repose ; but the 
leaders allowed themselves no rest whatever. A committee 
under the direction of Hampden was sent to Scotland, to re- 
main near the king, and watch over the interests of parlia- 
ment. || Another committee, numerous and invested with 
large powers, sat at Westminster in the interval of the two 
sessions ; Pym acted as its chairman. The house of lords 
took similar measures. IF A great many members spread 
themselves over the country, eager to diffiise their sentiments 
and their fears. Both parties, under the appearance of a 
truce, were seeking abroad new strength, both meditating new 
contests. 

In passing through the English army, which was disband- 
ing, and the Scottish army, which was returning home, the 
king did not think it advisable to stop long. Still his attempts 
with the soldiers, particularly among the officers, were so 
public that lord Holland, who presided over the disbanding, 

* Clarendon, i., 422. f Pari. Hist, ii., 897. f lb., 892. 

§The recess -Cvas to last from Sept. 8 to Oct. 20 ; Pari. Hist, ii., 904. 

II Pari. Hist., ii., 902. This committee was composed of six mem 
bers — namely, the earl of Bedford, lord Howard, sir William Armyn, 
sir Philip Stapleton, Nathaniel Fiennes, and John Hampden. 

IT lb. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 137 

wrote an anxious letter on the subject to the earl of Essex* 
(Aug. 16), adding, that on his return to London he would tell 
him more. Arrived in Edinburgh, Charles made to the par- 
liament and church of Scotland all the concessions they de- 
manded : triennial parliaments, the abrogation of the ancient 
prerogatives of the crown, the prosecution of the principal op- 
ponents of the covenant, even the intervention of parliament 
in the nomination of the privy council, nothing was refused. 
The king lent himself to the presbyterian worship, with a 
gravity which had nothing of the air of mere complaisance 
about it, assiduously attending their frequent prayers, and lis- 
tening attentively to their long sermons ; and, whether lay- 
men or ecclesiastics, noblemen or citizens, the chiefs of the 
covenanters were treated with marked favors ; titles, offices, 
promises, pensions were lavished upon them. 

On a sudden, rumor went through the city (early in October) 
that the most influential noblemen in parliament, Hamilton and 
Argyle, had quitted it, followed by their friends, and had re- 
tired to Kinneil castle, the residence of the earl of Lanark, 
Hamilton's brother, to escape the danger of an arrest and even 
of assassination. The astonishment at this was extreme ; all 
asked, none could give an answer, what had inspired the fugi- 
tives with such fears, the king with such designs. Strange 
conjectures spread abroad ; the king haughtily complained of 
them as an insult, and demanded of parliament the ex- 
clusion of Hamilton, till his honor was vindicated. The 
parliament, firm but circumspect, formed no sudden decision, 
but ordered an inquiry. Numerous witnesses were heard ; the 
committee made its report ; it declared, without going into 
particulars, that there was no occasion of reparation to the 
king, of fear to the fugitives. The two noblemen returned to 
parliament, remained silent, as did Charles, on what had 
passed, and from them the public learned nothing further. 

Neither party wished it should be better informed ; but, 
meantime, the matter had somehow been explained to it. At 
the time the king, in order to gain over Scotland against Eng- 
land, was making so many concessions, he was meditating the 
overthrow of his enemies in both kingdoms. Convinced that 
the judges could not do otherwise than condemn as treason the 

* Clarendon, i., 424. 
12* 



138 HISTORY OF THE 



correspondence of the English malcontents with the Scottish 
covenanters, which preceded and perhaps produced the last in- 
vasion, he had come to Scotland himself to seek for proofs, 
purposing on his return, to bring against the leaders of the 
commons that accusation which Strafford, anticipated by their 
more rapid movements, had not been able even to announce. 
A young and daring nobleman, at first devoted to the covenant, 
but since I'estored to the king's favor, the earl of Montrose, had 
engaged to procure for him the so anxiously desired documents. 
Relying upon this promise, Charles commenced his journey to 
the North ; but before he arrived, a letter in cipher, intercepted 
by Argyle, had excited the suspicion of the Scots, and the 
king found Montrose in prison. Animated by the danger and 
burning for revenge, the earl sent him word that if he could 
see him he would acquaint him with his real enemies, and 
their past machinations. By the aid of some trusty friends, 
Montrose secretly quitted his prison, went at night to the king's 
bedchamber, told him all he knew, accused Hamilton of having, 
with Argyle, taken part in the plans of the malcontents, assured 
the king that their papers would furnish proofs of this, and 
finally persuaded him to secure at once the persons of these 
noblemen, and to have them summarily dispatched if they 
resisted. Ever ready to adopt daring resolves, and without 
thinking of the effect which so violent an act could not fail to 
produce on the minds of the people whom he was seeking to 
conciliate, Charles consented to everything ; the plot proceeded 
simultaneously with the concessions, and c'C'erything was ready 
for its execution, when the two lords, warned in time, caused 
the whole thing to fail by their public departure.* 

The Scottish parliament wisely did its best to stifle the 
affair; it no longer feared the peril, and did not wish to endan- 
ger what it had just obtained, by pushing matters to extremity. 
The king himself, to conceal his designs and their want of 
success, raised Hamilton to the rank of duke, Argyle to that 
of marquis ; Lesley was created earl of Leven ; but Hamp- 
den and the English committee, well informed of all that had 
taken place, hastened to send word of it to London, where the 
parliament was about to meet. Fear seized the party there. f 

* Hardwicke's State Papers, ii., 209 ; Clarendon, i., 463; Burner,' 
Mem. of the Hamiltons, 14S-171 ; Baillie's Letters, i., 329, et seq. ; 
Laing, Hist, of Scotland, iii., 228 and 347 ; Brodie, iii., 142, 156. 

t Evelyn's Mem., ii., Append., p. 40, 46 ; Pari. Hist, ii., 914. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 139 

With all their distrust they had not anticipated such dangers 
as these, and the leaders thought their former relations with 
the Scottish insurgents had been pardoned, together with the 
rebellion itself, by the last treaty of peace. At this indication 
of the king's obstinately vindictive intentions, men, otherwise 
moderate, thought themselves irredeemably compromised. 
Mr. Hyde, meeting lord Essex and lord Holland, who were 
anxiously discussing the news, ridiculed their fears, and re- 
minded them of what they themselves thought of Hamilton and 
Argyle a year before : " Both the times and the court," they 
replied, " are much altered since that."* On the first day of 
their assembling, the commons applied to the earl of Essex foi 
a guard, rendered indispensable, they said, for the safety of 
parliament. It was at once granted. In conferences held at 
lord Holland's house at Kensington, the leadei's of both houses 
communicated to each other the information they from time to 
time received, and their suspicions, and deliberated what was 
to be done, all of them agitated, all impelled by their uneasi- 
ness to dare everything. " If there be a plot of the king 
against us," said lord Newport, " his wife and children are 
here ;""|" and their alarms were all the greater, because they 
dared not make use of them to stir up the people, for nothing 
having transpired in Scotland, in London nothing could be 
revealed. 

In the midst of this secret agitation, came all of a sudden the 
news (Nov. 1), that an insurrection, as general as violent, had 
covered Ireland with massacre, and threatened with the most 
imminent danger the protestant religion and the parliament. 
The Irish catholics, leaders and people, had risen in every 
direction, claiming liberty for their worship and their country, 
invoking the name of the queen, even of the king, showing a 
commission which they had, as they said, received from him, 
and announcing the project of delivering themselves and the 
throne from the English puritans, their common oppressors. 
The conspiracy, long preparing all over the kingdom, was dis- 
closed solely by chance, and that only at Dublin (Oct. 22), on 
the evening next before its explosion, so that there was scarcely 
time to secure from the outbreak the seat of government. 
Everywhere else it met with very little obstacle ; on all sides 

• Clarendon, i., 464. t Pari. Hist., ii., 984. 



140 HISTORY OF THE 



the protestants of Ireland were attacked unawares, ejected from 
their houses, hunted down, slaughtered, exposed to all the perils, 
all the torments that religious and patriotic hatred gould invent 
against heretics, foreigners, and tyrants. The most fearful and 
distressing accounts arrived of the miseries they were subjected 
to ; of infinite murders, of sufferings altogether unprecedented ; 
and the evil was indeed so great, that it might be exaggerated, 
according to men's fears or designs, without offending truth or 
exhausting credulity.* A half-savage people, passionately 
attached to the barbarism which their oppressors made matter 
of reproach, while they prevented them from quitting it, had 
seized with transport the hope of deliverance which the dissen- 
sions of their tyrants offered them. Eager to avenge in a day 
ages of outrage and misery, they with a proud joy committed 
excesses which struck their ancient masters with horror and 
dismay. The English authorities were utterly without the 
" means of resistance ; in its hatred to Strafford and the crown, 
solely occupied by the design of establishing liberty in Eng- 
land, parliament had forgotten that in Ireland it desired to keep 
up tyranny. The treasury there had been thoroughly ex- 
hausted, martial law abolished, the army reduced to an insig- 
nificant corps, the royal power disarmed. It had even, con- 
trary to the king's wish, forbidden the disbanded Irish troops to 
pass into foreign service ■,"[ and these had accordingly spread 
over the country, adding their force to the insurrection. 
Finally, though the earl of Leicester had been appointed suc- 
cessor to Strafford, there was as yet no viceroy resident in 
Ireland; the public business was entrusted to two judges, desti- 
tute of capacity or influence,:]: and whose presbyterian zeal had 
alone procured for them this difficult office. 

* May (ii., 4) makes the number of protestants who were massacred, 
200,000 ; Clarendon reduces it to 40,000 or 50,000 (ii., 227). It is pro- 
bable, from the correspondence of the judges then in Ireland, and the 
inquiry made into the subject in 1644, that even the last account is ex- 
aggerated. Yet this inquiry, which Mr. Lingard (x., note A., p. 463, 
469) considers as decisive, deserves no confidence ; not only was it made 
three years after the outbreak, but at an epoch when the royalist party 
reigned absolute in Ireland, ^nd had just made peace with the catho- 
lics ; it had evidently for its object to soften as much as possible the 
excesses of the insurgents, the sufferings of the protestants, and thus to 
excuse the alliance the king was on the point of contracting. 

t Rushworth, i., 3, 3S1. 

X Sir William Parsons and sir John Borlase. 



ENGLISH EEVOLUTION. 141 

A cry of terror and fierce hate arose against popery all over 
England ; every protestant thought himself in danger. The 
king, who had received the news in Scotland, hastened to com- 
municate it to the two houses, announcing certain measures 
which, with the assistance of the Scots, he had already taken 
to repress the rebellion, but leaving all future management of 
the affair entirely to the care of parliament.* Charles had 
nothing to do with the insurrection, and the pretended commis- 
sion produced by Sir Phelim O'Neil was a gross forgery ; but 
his known hatred of the puritans, the confidence he had more 
than once manifested in the catholics, the intrigues that for the 
last three months he had been carrying on in Ireland, to secure 
strongholds and soldiers there in case of need,-j- the promises 
made by the queen, had persuaded the Irish that they might, 
without fearing a sincere disavowal, make use of his name. 
Ireland in rebellion, Charles hoped so great a danger would 
render the parliament more tractable ; and without supporting 
the rebels, without contemplating for a moment any alliance 
with them, he was not, like his people, seized with anger and 
fear at their revolt ; he was in no haste to repress it, and left 
the affair to parliament at once to throw upon it all the blame 
for any mischances, and to remove from himself the suspicion 
of complicity ; perhaps, also, to relieve himself in the eyes of 
his catholic subjects from responsibility for the rigor they 
would be subjected to. 

But cunning is of no avail against the passions of a people ; 
he who will not affect to adopt cannot deceive them. The 
leaders of the commons, more skilful and better situated, only 
thought of working them to their own profit. Their uneasi- 
ness had now disappeared, for the English people thought 
themselves fallen into a peril analogous to their own. Promp" 
to accept the power offered them by the king, notwithstanding 
the pomp of their declarations and the violence of their threats, 
the care of repressing the rebellion occupied them but little ; 
the assistance, both in troops and money, sent to Ireland, was 

* Clarendon, i., 467. 

t Carte, Life of Ormond, i., 132; iii., 30; Clarendon, State Papers, 
ii., 337 ; Antrim's information, in the appendix to Clarendon's History 
of the Irish Rebellion. The testimony given by Antrim, more espe- 
cially as to facts, does not, however, in my opinion, deserve the confi- 
dence placed in it by Lingard, x., 150, and Godwin, i., 220. 



142 HISTORY OF THE 



weak, tardy, and ill-arranged. To England alone were ad- 
dressed all their speeches, all their real action, and by a step 
as decisive as unexpected, they resolved to engage it inex- 
tricably. 

Shortly after the opening of parliament, a committee had 
been charged to prepare a general remonstrance, setting forth 
all the grievances of the kingdom, and the means of redress- 
ing them. But the reform had been so rapid that they had 
neglected to give much prominence to the complaints : most 
of the grievances, the political grievances at least, had disap- 
peared ; the committee took no further heed to its commission, 
and no one appeared to think any more about it. 

It now suddenly (towards the beginning of November) re- 
ceived orders to resume its labors, and to make a report with- 
out delay.* In a few days the remonstrance was drawn up 
and submitted to the house. It was no longer, according to 
the first intention, an exposition of actual and pressing abuses, 
and of the unanimous wish of the country, but a dark picture 
of past evils, of old grievances, of all the delinquencies of the 
king, contrasted with the merits of the parliament, and the 
obstacles it had surmounted, the perils it had encountered, and 
particularly those which still threatened it and necessitated 
the utmost efforts of its power ; it was, in short, a sort of ap- 
peal to the people, addressed more especially to the fanatical 
presbyterians, and which, fomenting the passions that the Irish 
rebellion had rekindled, excited them to devote themselves un- 
reservedly to the house of commons, alone capable of saving 
them from popery, the bishops, and the king. 

When the remonstrance was first read, many murmurs rose 
against it ; an act so hostile, without public grounds, without 
any direct or apparent aim, excited in many members, till 
then far from friendly to the court, surprise and suspicion ; 
they complained of the bitterness of the language, the futile 
indignation against grievances already redressed, of the rude- 
ness shown towards the king, the hopes held out to the secta- 
ries. What were the hidden designs, the unknown perils that 
required such violent measures ? If the remonstrance was 
destined for the king alone, what good could be expected from 
it ? If it was meant for the people, what right had its pro- 

* Clarendon, i., 469. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 143 

meters to appeal from the house to the people. The leaders 
of the party said little in reply, not being able to say all ; but 
in their private conversations, they ardently labored to gain 
votes, protesting that they only wanted to intimidate the court 
and frustrate its intrigues ; and that if the remonstrance was 
only adopted, they would not publish it. This was- not with- 
out effect, for distrust was now so catching, that men, other- 
wise of a moderate turn, received it when suggested without 
violence, and in the language of reason. In a few days (Nov. 
21), at the moment when the house, after a sitting of several 
hours, was about to rise, the leaders moved that the remon- 
strance should be immediately put t j the vote ; they had 
reckoned their numbers, and thought themselves sui'e of suc- 
cess ; but lord Falkland, Hyde, Colepepper, Palmer, opposed 
the motion wat'mly, insisting that it should be adjourned till 
the next day, to which the house willingly assented. " Why," 
said Cromwell to lord Falkland, " would you have it put off? 
the day would quickly have determined it." " There would 
not have been time enough," said lord Falkland, " for sure it 
would take some debate." " A very sorry one," answered 
Cromwell, with real or affected confidence. Opened the next 
day at three in the afternoon, when night came the debate 
seemed scarcely begun. It was no longer the court and the 
country contending ; for the first time, there were now engaged 
two parties, if not both national, at least both sprung from the 
body of the nation ; both putting themselves forward as the 
upholders of public interests and feelings, both reckoning 
worthy and independent citizens among their followers. Com- 
mon hopes had united them ; opposite fears divided them ; 
each sagaciously foresaw the result which would follow the 
triumph of its adversaries, but mistook that which its own vic- 
tory would produce. They struggled with unexampled ran- 
cor, and were all the more obstinate that they still observed 
decorum, and dared not loudly accuse each other, according to 
the dictates of their suspicions. The hours passed on ; fatigue 
drove away the weak, the indifferent, and the aged ; even one 
of the king's ministers, the secretary of state, Nicholas, left 
the house before the close of the debate. " This," said sir 
Benjamin Rudyard, " will be the verdict of a starving jury." 
At length, towards midnight they divided : one hundred and 
fifty-nine votes adopted the remonstrance, one hundred and 



144 HISTORY OF THE 



forty-eight were against it. Forthwith Hampden rose, and 
moved that it should be printed at once. " We knew it ! " 
many cried ; " you want to raise the people and get rid of the 
lords." " The house," said Mr. Hyde, " is not in the habit 
of thus publishing its decisions ; in my opinion the doing so is 
not lawful, and would produce mischievous effects ; if it be 
adopted, let me be allowed to protest." " I protest," said Mr. 
Palmer ; " I protest, I protest ! " re-echoed their friends. 
This, again, with the other party, gave rise to astonishment 
and indignation ; protests, in use with the lords, were unknown 
to the commons : Pym rose to demonstrate their illegality and 
danger ; he was interrupted by invectives ; he persisted, and 
was answered by threats. The whole house was on its legs, 
and several members, their hands on their swords, seemed on 
the point of beginning a civil war within the walls of parlia- 
ment. Two hours passed away, the tumult recommencing 
with every attempt to carry a resolution. At last Hampden, 
after deploring mildly but gravely this humiliating disorder, 
proposed that the house should rise, and adjourn the further 
discussion of the question till the afternoon. They separated. 
" Well," said lord Falkland to Cromwell, as he was going 
out, " was there a debate ? " " I'll take your word another 
time," said Cromwell ; and whispered him in the ear with 
some asseveration — " had the remonstrance been rejected, I 
would, to-morrow, have sold everything I possess, and never 
seen England more ; and I know many other honest men of 
the same resolution."* 

The afternoon sitting was comparatively tranquil; the' 
royalists had given up all hope of victory, and their adversa- 
ries had seen themselves so near losing it, that they did not 
desire to renew the struggle. They had announced the im- 
peachment of the protestants ; but Mr. Hyde had friends in 
the house who refused to give him up. Mr. Palmer, indeed, was 
sent to the Tower, but quitted it almost immediately. After some 
mutual explanations, this quarrel was hushed up. A majority 
of twenty-three ordered the remonstrance to be printed. f 
The execution, however, of the order was delayed, as it was first 
necessary to present it to the king, who was daily expected. 

* Clarendon, i., 48, 2S5 ; Warwick's Mem.; May, ii., 16, et seq. i 
Rushworth, ii., 3, 425 ; Whitelocke, 51 
t Clarendon, i., 490; Pari. Hist, ii., 937. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 145 

He arrived, confident and haughty (Nov. 25), notwithstand- 
ing the check he had received in Scotland, and what he had 
heard of the new acerbity of parliament. Everywhere on his 
way, particularly at York, he had been received with vocifer- 
ous manifestations of affection and joy. In many places, his 
concessions to the Scots had delighted the people ; his secret 
machinations were unknown, or not understood. Besides, in 
the country, as well as in parliament, the royalist party was 
getting together, and exhibiting its feelings. This was the 
case even in the city of London. The king's friends had 
carried the election of the new lord mayor, Richard Gourney, 
an active, courageous man, devoted to the king, who prepared 
a most brilliant reception for his sovereign. A multitude of 
citizens on horseback, armed, preceded by the banners of the 
various companies, went to meet him, and escorted him with 
acclamations to the palace of Whitehall. The king in return 
gave them a magnificent banquet, and conferred the honor of 
knighthood on the lord mayor and several of the aldermen ;* 
and the day after his arrival, eager to show the commons that 
he thought his position a strong one, he withdrew the guard 
which, in his absence, the earl of Essex had appointed for 
their safety (Nov. 26). f 

The aspect of affairs now changed ; to the unanimous 
enthusiasm of the entire kingdom succeeded party struggles ; 
to reform, revolution. The leaders saw this, and their conduct 
suddenly assumed a new character. The remonstrance was 
presented to the king (Dec. 1) ; he patiently listened while it 
was read ; and then, addressing the committee, asked : " Does 
the house intend to publish this declaration ?" " We can 
give no answer," was the reply. " Well, then," said the 
king, " I suppose you do not expect an answer to so long a 
petition now ; I shall give you one with as much speed as the 
weightiness of the business will permit.":}: The leaders of the 
commons were altogether indifferent on the point ; without 
any delay whatever, they at once brought forward projects 
that even the remonstrance did not hint at. Hitherto they 
had redressed grievances, appealed to the ancient laws ; now 



* Rushworth, i., 3, 429; May, ut sup ; Whitelocke, 50; Evelyn's 
Mem., Appendix ii., 79. 

t Pari. Hist., ii., 940. t Pari. Hist., ii., 949 

13 



146 HISTORY OF THE 



they proclaimed new principles, imperiously demanded inno- 
vations. A bill was under discussion for levying troops for 
Ireland ; they inserted these words in the preamble, " That 
the king hath, in no case, or upon any occasion but invasion 
from a foreign power, authority to press the free-born sub- 
ject, that being inconsistent Avith the freedom and liberty of 
his person."* Another bill was proposed, that the organiza- 
tion of the militia and the nomination of its officers, should for 
the future only take place with the concurrence and consent 
of parliament (Dec. 7).'[ By the influence of the presby- 
terians, the bill excluding all the ecclesiastics from civil offices 
(Oct. 23):}: had, a few days before the king's return, been 
again brought forward and adopted ; but the lords kept it 
waiting; the commons now angrily complained of this : "This 
house," said they, " being the representative body of the whole 
kingdom, and their lordships being but as particular persons, 
and coming to parliament in a particular capacity, if they 
shall not be pleased to consent to the passing of these acts and 
others necessary to the preservation and safety of the kingdom, 
then this house, together with such of the lords that are more 
sensible of the safety of the kingdom, will join together, and 
represent the same unto his majesty." And the popular 
noblemen, the earls of Northumberland, Essex, and Warwick, 
permitted this language to pass unnoticed. § Out of doors, the 
party rallied round their leaders with equal ardor ; the 
remonstrance was published (Sept. 14). 1| The city declared 
that, in receiving the king with so much pomp, the citizens of 
London had not meant to convey any change of sentiment 
towards their true friends, and that they would live and die 
with the parliament. IT A petition from the apprentices set 
forth, in lamentable array, the sufferings of commerce and 
trades, imputing them to the papists, the bishops, and bad 
councillors.** In the counties, associations were formed 
devoted to the defence of the people's liberty and faith. From 
all quarters, the nation hastened to the aid of the commons ; 
sinister reports from time to time produced new proofs of their 
attachment ; now it v/as rumored that the life of Pym had 

* Clarendon, i., 507 ; Pari. Hist, ii., 969 ; May, ut sup. 
I May, ut ^up. ; Clarendon, i., 513. % Pari. Hist., ii., 916. 

§ Journals, Commons, Dec. 3. || Pari. Hist, ii., 970. T May. 
** Clarendon ; i., 519 ; Rushworth, i., 3, 462. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 147 

been threatened ; now, that the Irish rebels were preparing 
an invasion ; a mysterious visit, a word picked up in the 
street, sufficed as groundwork for the party to base a plot 
upon, and to call upon their adherents for fresh oaths of union ; 
and while the commons each day demanded the restoration of 
their guard, the multitude assembled each day round West- 
minster Hall formed one for them, incessantly sending forth 
shouts proclaiming a common peril. 

Against these daring pretensions, maintained by such 
tumultuous passions, Charles, on his side, rallied all his par- 
tisans, the interested servants of absolute power, the loyal 
defenders of the king, whatever his cause, and those citizens 
who had until of late opposed tyranny, but who were brought 
back to the foot of the throne by the fear of innovations and 
excesses. The latter formed, almost solely, the rising royalist 
party in the house of commons. Lord Falkland, Mr. Hyde, 
and sir John Colepepper were its leaders ; and Charles resolved 
to attach them to him. Already, before his journey into Scot- 
land, he had held secret interviews with Hyde ; and by the 
respectful wisdom of his advice, by his aversion to all inno- 
vations, above all, by his devotion to the church, Hyde had 
gained his confidence.* He did not equally like lord Falk- 
land, who despised the court, cared little for the king, whom 
he had not come near, and opposed the innovators, rather for 
the sake of offended justice than for that of menaced power. 
Charles feared him, and did not feel at ease in his presence. 
However, it was necessary to conciliate him. Hyde, his most 
intimate friend, undertook the negotiation. Falkland at first 
refused : his scrupulous virtue severed him from the abettors 
of revolution ; but his principles, his wishes, the impulses of 
his somewhat visionary imagination, constantly impelled him 
towards the friends of liberty. He alleged his antipathy to 
the coui't, his inability to serve it, and his resolution of never 
employing either falsehood, or corruption, or spies ; " useful, 
perhaps necessary means," said he, " but with which I will 
never sully my hands." Surprised and piqued at having to 
solicit a subject, Charles nevertheless persisted. Hyde 
enlarged upon the immense injury such a refusal would be to 
the king. Falkland suffered himself to be persuaded, though 

* Clarendon, Memoirs, \., passim. 



148 HISTORY OF THE 



disheartened beforehand, as the victim of a devotion prompted 
neither by affection nor hope. He w^as named secretary of 
state. Colepepper, much less influential, but distinguished 
for his boldness, and the resources of his mind in debate, 
became chancellor of the exchequer. Hyde alone, contraiy 
to the king's wish, pertinaciously refused any office, not from 
fear, but from prudence, and from the opinion that he should 
serve him better in maintaining the exterior independence of 
his position. The three friends undertook the management 
of the king's affairs in the house, and Charles promised to 
attempt nothing there without their counsel.* 

At the same time, other servants, less useful, but more 
ardent, hastened from all parts of the kingdom to defend his 
nonor and his life, threatened, as they said, by parliament. 
Notwithstanding the decay of the feudal system, the senti- 
ments to which it had given rise still animated many of the 
gentry. Inactive in their country seats, little accustomed to 
reflection or debate, they despised those prating, cavilling 
citizens, whose gloomy creed proscribed the wine-drinking, the 
sports, the pleasures of old England, and who assumed to rule 
the king, whom their fathers had not even had the honor to 
serve. Proud in the recollection of their own independence, 
the country gentry cared little about the new wants of public 
liberty. In common with the people, they had murmured 
against the court and against tyranny ; but after so many 
concessions from the throne, their want of foresight and their 
loyalty made them indignant at the insolent pertinacity of the 
innovators. They came to London in arms, paraded the 
streets haughtily, showed themselves and expressed their 
opinions loudly in the taverns and public places, and often 
went to Whitehall to offer their services and solicit some favor 
from the king. There they were joined by others, drawn 
together by a devotion less genuine, but still more blind, the 
officers, the reformadoes, whom the disbanding of the army 
had left without pay or employment ; most of them soldiers of 
fortune, bred in the wars of the continent, dissolute, venal, 
and daring, irritated, against the parliament, who had deprived 
them of their trade, against the people, who detested their 
manners, and ready to do anything for any master who would 

* Clarendon, i., 528, ii., 297 ; Warwick's Mem., 194. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 149 

employ them, no matter in what cause. Young lawyers, stu- 
dents in the Temple, proteges of the court, or anxious to share 
its pleasures, or thinking they proved their high birth and 
elegance of taste by embracing its cause, swelled the restless 
and presumptuous throng which daily assembled round White- 
hall, inveighing against the commons, insulting all who took 
part with them, prodigal of boastings and railleries, and eager 
for the king, or chance, to give them some opportunity of 
pushing their fortune by proving their loyalty.* 

The popular party were no less impatient to give them 
this opportunity ; its assemblages became every day more nu- 
merous and excited. Bands of apprentices, workmen, women, 
went every morning from the city to Westminster, and in 
passing by Whitenall, the shouts, " No bishops ! no popish 
lords ! " were sent forth with redoubled energy. At times, 
they would halt, and one of them getting on a post, would 
there read to the crowd the names of the " disaffected mem- 
bers of the house of commons," or those of " the false, evil, 
rotten-hearted lords." Their audacity went so far as to de- 
mand that there should be no sentinel at the gates of the 
palace, so that they inight see the king at any hour, when- 
ever they pleased. "I" Violent contests soon arose ; the names 
of cavaliers and roundheads distinguished the two parties ; 
the citizens at first repelled the latter appellation as an insult, 
but afterwards adopted it as an honorable title.:}: The cava- 
liers sought their enemies around Westminster Hall, at once 
to beard them, and to protect the menaced royalists as they 
left the houses of parliament. It was particularly against the 
upper house that the people's anger was directed, for the bill 
excluding the bishops still remained in suspense there. The 
archbishop of York, Williams, on his way to the house on 
foot, tried to arrest with his own hands a young man who fol- 
lowed him with insults ; the ci'owd rushed upon the prelate, 
and his friends had great difficulty in getting him ofF.^ Both 
parties by turns made and rescued prisoners. Blood flowed, 
the cavaliers boasted with derision of having dispersed their 
adversaries, but the latter returned the next day, more expe- 

* Ludlow's Memoirs (1771), 10. 

t Clarendon, i., 526 ; May, ut sup. ; Pari. Hist, ii., 986. 
j Clarendon, i., 52S, ii., 296 ; Rushworth, i., 3, 493. 
§ Clarendon, Hist., i., 526, ii., 294; Rushworth, i., 3,493. 
13* 



150 HISTORY OF THE 



rienced and better armed. One evening, when the lords 
were still sitting, the tumult without became so violent, that 
the marquis of Hertford went over to the bishops' bench, and 
advised them not to go out; "for," said he, "those people 
vow they will watch you at your coming out, and search 
every coach for you with torches, so as you cannot escape." 
" Must we then pass the night here 1 " asked the bishops. 
" It is very possible," replied, with a smile, some of the sup- 
porters of the bill of • exclusion. They did depart, however ; 
some in the carriage of one of the popular lords, others by 
back passages ; and even among their friends many began to 
think their presence was not worth the danger it occasion- 
ed.* Twice did the upper house claim the assistance of the 
commons in the suppression of these outrages (Dec. 20 — 30) ; 
but the commons remained silent, or answered by complain- 
ing of the disorders of the cavaliers. "We must not discour- 
age our friends, this being a time we must make use of all of 
them," said the leaders. " God forbid the house of commons 
should proceed in any way to dishearten the people to obtain 
their just rights in such a way ! "f The lords applied to the 
magistrates, calling upon them to proceed against the rioters 
according to law ; and upon an order, to which was affixed 
the great seal, the justices enjoined the constables to place a 
guard round Westminster Hall to disperse the mob. The 
commons had the constables to their bar, treated the order as 
a breach of privilege, and sent one of the justices to the 
Tower.:): At the same time, the house voted that as the king 
persisted in refusing them a guard, each member might bring 
one servant with him, and station him at the door of the house, 
armed as he might think fit. 

These riots, these incessant outcries, this constant, unma- 
nageable disorder, filled the king with anger and with fear ; 
never, amid his darkest apprehensions, had such scenes en- 
tered his imagination ; he was astonished and indignant that 
royal majesty snould have to endure such gross insults ; and 
it was no longer for his power alone, but for the safety, at all 
events for the dignity of his person and life, that he began 
to be alarmed. The queen, still more agitated, besieged him 
with her terrors ; and the pride of the monarch and the ten- 

♦ Pari. Hist., ii., 991. t lb., 9S6. t lb., 987. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 151 



derness of the husband could not support the idea of peril or 
insult to the object of his affections, the partner of his rank. 
Looking around in every direction for some support against 
the multitude, some means of preventing or punishing their 
excesses, he resolved to get rid of the governor of the Tower, 
sir William Balfour, a person devoted to the commons, and 
to put a sure and daring man in his place. Three thousand 
pounds, the produce of the sale of some of the queen's jewels, 
were given to sir William to appease his anger. Sir Thomas 
Lunsford, one of the most audacious leaders of the cavaliers 
assembled at Whitehall, succeeded him (towards Dec. 20).* 
At the same time, the king assumed a higher tone with the 
parliament, endeavoring to intimidate it in his turn. Hyde 
had prepared a firm and able answer to the remonstrance ; 
Charles adopted it, and had it published in his own name.| 
The bill for the impressment of soldiers was still under dis- 
cussion in parliament ; before it was presented to him, Charles 
went to the house, and declared that he would not accept it 
until the passage in the preamble, depriving him of the power 
of ordering impressment, was struck out (Dec. 14).:]: Irish 
affairs made no progress ; he called upon the commons to 
take them decidedly in hand, and offered to raise ten thousand 
volunteers, if the house would promise to pay them (Dec. 
29). § On their part, and perhaps with his consent, the 
bishops assembled to deliberate on their situation ; violence 
awaited them at the doors of the upper house ; they resolved 
to absent themselves, to set forth in a protest the motives of 
their withdrawal, declaring null and void every bill that should 
be adopted without the concurrence of all the legitimate and 
necessary members of parliament. Suddenly drawn up and 
signed by twelve bishops,j| the protest was at once presented 
to the king,, who eagerly received it : it presented to him the 
hope of one day, under this pretext, annulling the acts of that 
fatal parliament which he could not quell ; on the instant, 
without mentioning the matter to his new councillors, whose 

* Clarendon, i., 517; ii., 234. 

t Clarendon's Memoirs, i., 124; Pari. Hist., ii., 970. 

i Pari. Hist, ii., 98S. § lb., ii., 991. 

II The archbishop of York, and the bishops of Durham, Litchfield, 
St. Asaph, Oxford, Bath and Wells, Hereford, Ely, Gloucester, Peter- 
borough, Llandaff, and Norwich. 



152 HISTORY OF THE 



advice he feai*ed much more than he estimated their influ- 
ence, he ordered the lord high keeper to carry it that same 
day to the upper house, applauding himself for his address 
(Dec. 30).* 

The astonishment of the lords was extreme ; they could not 
conceive how twelve bishops, whose parliamentary existence 
was at that moment in question, should thus pretend to order 
the fate of parliament itself, to annihilate it by their absence. 
Communicated without delay to the commons, the protest was 
received there with that apparent anger and secret joy which 
the faults of an enemy inspire. The impeachment of the 
bishops for conspiring against the fundamental laws of the 
kingdom and the existence of parliament^ was at once moved 
and carried. Irritated by their imprudence, perhaps glad to 
avail themselves of a pretext for forsaking without shame a 
ruined cause, their friends remained silent ; only one voice 
rose in their favor, saying, they were stark mad, and should 
be sent to Bedlam, and not before the judges.:}: The upper 
house sanctioned the impeachment, and sent the prelates to 
the Tower. Eager to make the most of so favorable an op- 
portunity, the leaders of the commons pressed on all their 
attacks. They had already complained of the king's decla- 
ration on the subject of the Impressment Bill, as destructive 
of their privileges, which did not permit that he should take 
notice of any measure while under discussion ; they now 
insisted on the necessity of firmly securing these privileges, 
their only anchor of safety amidst so many perils. They 
protested against handing over the Tower to sir Thomas 
Lunsford, a man in almost universal disrepute, without for- 
tune, religion, or morals, known only by his acts of violence 
against the people, and capable of the most desperate excess- 
es. Already, said they, the alai'm was so great in the city 
that merchants and foreigners no longer deposited their bul- 
lion in the Tower. They demanded the nomination of 
another governor. Lord Digby, now become the king's most 
intimate confidant, was denounced for having said that parlia- 
ment was not free.§ Finally, reports were even spread that 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 993 ; -Clarendon, i., 546. 

t Pari. Hist, ii., 994; Whitelocke, 53. J Clarendon, i., 552. 

§ Pari. History, ii., 969. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 153 

the queen herself might ere long be impeached for high 
treason. 

The king seemed to give way ; he took no step in favor 
of the bishops, withdrew the government of the Tower from 
Lunsford, and gave it to Sir John Byron, a grave and steady 
man, generally esteemed,* spoke no more about the riots, did 
not complain of the last debates. Yet secret reports and 
vague whispers disturbed the commons. The queen, silent 
and reserved, seemed animated with some hope ; lord Digby, 
whose presumptuous temerity was well known, visited her 
frequently, and seemed every day more and more intimate 
with her and with the king. The concourse of cavaliers at 
Whitehall doubled. Without explaining their fears the com- 
mons sent a message, applying once more for a guard (Dec. 
31). The king made no answer to the application, which, he 
said, must be communicated to him in a written petition. 
Thereupon, the commons ordered arras to be brought into the 
house, as if assured of some immediate danger. Three days 
after, the king's answer came ; it was a refusal, concluding 
with these words. " We do engage unto you solemnly, on 
the word of a king, that the security of all and every one of 
you from violence, is and shall ever be as much our care as 
the preservation of us and our children." But the house, 
more alarmed than ever, ordered the lord mayor, the sheriffs, 
and common council, to keep the London militia on foot, and 
to place strong guards at various points of the city.j" 

On that very day (Jan. 3, 1642), sir Edward Herbert, the 
attorney-general, went to the house of peers, and, in the king's 
name, accused of high treason lord Kimbolton and five mem- 
bers of the commons, Hampden, Pym, Holies, Strode, and 
Haslerig, for having attempted, 1st, to subvert the funda- 
mental laws of the kingdom, and to deprive the king of his 
lawful authority ; 2dly, to alienate the people from the king 
by odious calumnies ; 3dly, to raise the army against the 
king ; 4thly, to engage a foreign power, Scotland, to invade 
the kingdom ; 5thly, to annihilate the rights and the very ex- 
istence of parliaments ; 6thly, to excite against the king and 
the parliament seditious assemblages, for the purpose of secur- 
ing, by violence, success to their criminal designs ; Tthly, to 

* Clarendon, i., 518. 

t Pari. Hist, ii., 1002; Rushworth, i., 3, 471 ; Journals, Commons. 



154 HISTORY OF THE 



levy war upon the king. Sir Edward required, at the same 
time, that a committee should be appointed to examine the 
charges, and that the house would be pleased to secure the 
persons of the accused.* 

The lords were thunderstruck ; no one had foreseen such 
a proceeding, and no one dared to speak first. Lord Kim- 
bolton rose : " I am ready," said he, " to obey any order of 
the house ; but since my impeachment is public, I demand 
that my justification may be so too." And he resumed his 
place amid continued silence. Lord Digby was sitting next 
him. He whispered in his ear, " What mischievous counsels 
are given to the king ! It shall go hard but I find out whence 
they come." And he forthwith quitted the house, as if to 
seek the information of which he spoke. Yet it was he and 
no other, it is said, who had urged the king to this enterprise, 
undertaking, moreover, that he himself would demand the 
immediate arrest of lord Kimbolton, as soon as the attorney- 
general should have accused him.f 

On the instant, a message from the lords informed the com- 
mons of what had passed ; they had just heard that the king's 
people had gone to the houses of the five members, and were 
putting their seals on everything in them. The house forth- 
with voted these proceedings a breach of privilege, which the 
accused were entitled, and the constables were called upon 
in duty, to resist, and that the king's officers should be arrested 
and brought to the bar as delinquents. Sir John Hotham was 
sent to the lords to request an immediate conference, and with 
orders to declare that if the house of peers refused to combine 
with the commons in demanding a guard from the king, the 
commons would retire to a safer place. While they were 
waiting the lords' answer, a sergeant-at-arms presented him- 
self. " In the name of the king my master," said he, " I am 
come to require Mr. Speaker to place in my custody five 
gentlemen, members of this house, whom his majesty has 
commanded me to arrest for high treason ;" and he proceeded 
to name them. The accused were present, but not one quitted 
his place ; the speaker ordered the sergeant to retire. Without 
tumult as without opposition, the house appointed a committee 
to go, the house still sitting, to inform the king that so im- 

* Rushworth, i., 3, 473. f I^., 474; Clarendon, i., 559. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 155 

portant a message could only be answered after mature con- 
sideration. Two ministers of the crown, lord Falkland and sir 
John Colepepper, formed part of the committee : they had been 
quite ignorant of the plan. The conference with the lords was 
opened, and in less than an hour it was jointly resolved to 
order the removal of the seals placed on the papers of the five 
members, and that a guard should be demanded. The petition 
for a guard was forthwith conveyed to the king by the duke 
of Richmond, one of his most honest favorites. " I will give 
an answer to-morrow," said the king, in his turn ; and the 
commons adjourned to the next day at one o'clock, ordering 
the accused to be in attendance at Westminster as usual.* 

When the house reassembled (Jan. 4) at the appointed 
hour, their uneasiness and anger were redoubled ; the pre- 
sentiment of some fresh danger, unknown but certain, agitated 
every mind. The royalists sat sorrowful and silent ; among 
their adversaries a thousand reports were in active circula- 
tion, collected the evening before, during the night, that very 
morning : the cavaliers, it was said, had assembled, the king 
had sent them word to be ready, two barrels of gunpowder 
and arms had been brought from the Tower to Whitehall,f 
every one crowded round the five members, with conjectures, 
information, advice. They themselves knew more of the 
matter than their informants : the minister of France, long 
since in secret correspondence with them, and the countess of 
Carlisle, Pym's mistress, it is said, had given them notice of 
the coup d'etat in preparation ;:j: but they mentioned not a 
word of this. Suddenly entered the house an officer, captain 
Langrish, lately returned from service in France, and whose 
connexion with some of the cashiered officers gave him oppor- 
tunities of knowing all that was going on. He announced 
that the king was at hand, that he had seen him set out from 
Whitehall, escorted by three or four hundred men, guards, 
eavaliers, students, all armed, to arrest the accused in person. 
A great tumult arose, but the necessity of a prompt decision 
soon appeased it. The house urged the five members to 
withdraw, as several gentlemen had already drawn their 

* Rushworth, i., 3, 474 ; Pari. Hist, ii., 1007. 
t Rushworth, i., 3, 476. 

i lb., 477 ; Whitelocke, 53 ; Warwick's Mem., 203; Mazure, Hist. 
de la Revolution, iii., 429 ; Mad. de Motteville's Mem. (1750), i., 266, 



156 HISTORY OF THE 



swords for resistance. Pym, Hampden, Holies, and Haslerig, 
at once departed ; Strode refused ; he was entreated, pressed ; 
the king had already entered Palace Yard ; at last his friend, 
sir Walter Earl, roughly pushed him out. The other mem- 
bers all took their seats. The king had traversed Westmin- 
ster Hall between a double rank of his attendants ; but only 
his body-guard ascended with him the stairs leading to the 
house ; on reaching the door, he forbade them, under penalty 
of death, to follow him a step further, and entered the house 
uncovered, accompanied only by his nephew, the count pala- 
tine. All the members uncovered and rose. The king, as 
he passed, cast a glance at the place where Pym usually sat ; 
not seeing him there, he advanced towards the speaker. " By 
your favor, Mr. Speaker," said he, " I will borrow your chair 
for a moment." Then seating himself, he cast his eyes round 
on the assembly : " Gentlemen," said he, " I am sorry for 
this occasion of coming unto you. Yesterday, I sent a ser- 
jeant-at-arms upon a very important occasion, to apprehend 
some that by my command were accused of high treason, 
whereunto I did expect obedience, and not a message ; and I 
must declare unto you here, that albeit no king that ever was 
in England shall be more careful of your privileges, to main- 
tain them to the uttermost of his power, than I shall be, yet 
you must know that in cases of treason no person hath a 
privilege ; and therefore I am come to know if any of these, 
persons that were accused ai'e here, for I must tell you, gen- 
tlemen, that so long as these persons that I have accused, for 
no slight crime, but for treason, are here, I cannot expect that 
this house will be in the right way that I do heartily wish it ; 
therefore I am come to tell you that I must have them where- 
soever I find them. Mr. Speaker, where are they ?" The 
speaker, falling on his knees, replied, " May it please your 
majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak, in 
this place, but as the house is pleased to direct me, whose 
servant I am here. And humbly beg your majesty's pardon, 
that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your 
majesty is pleased to demand of me." " Well," replied the 
king, " since I see all the birds are flown, I do expect from 
you that you shall send them unto me as soon as they return 
hither. But I assure you, on the word of a king, I never did 
intend any force, but shall proceed against them in a legal and 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 157 

fair way ; for I never meant any other : and now, since I see 
I cannot do what I came for, I will trouble you no more, but 
tell you, I do expect, as soon as they come to the house, you 
will send them to me, otherwise I must take my own course 
to find them." He then quitted the chair, his hat still in his 
hand. The house remained motionless ; but from several 
parts of the house as the king withdrew, arose the cry, 
" Privilege ! Privilege !"* 

As soon as he was gone, the house, without doing, or even 
announcing anything, adjourned to the next day ; all the 
members went away, eager to learn to what extent the king's 
designs had gone, and what the public thought of them. 
They found outside, on the stairs, in the great hall, at the 
doors, among their own servants who were waiting for them, 
and in the assembled multitude, an emotion no less vivid than 
their own. " Nothing," says an affidavit of the day, " was 
talked of but the insults of the cavaliers. One of them, a 
captain Hyde, drew a pistol from his pocket, and said, jeer- 
ingly, it was not charged, but upon trial it was found to be 
charged very deep, and he said he had five supplies for the 
same ; and he cursed and swore at the parliament for prick- 
eared, cropt-eared rascals, and said he'd kill as many of 'em 
as he could. ""j" The five members had retired into the city ; 
the citizens took to arms ; the lord mayor attempted in vain 
to calm them ; strong patrols were spontaneously formed for 
the common safety ; and during the whole of the evening, 
bands of apprentices paraded the streets, crying out from door 
to door that the cavaliers were coming to set the city on fire ; 
some even added that the king was commanding them in 
person. 

The agitation was equally great at Whitehall. The king 
and queen had built the highest hopes on this coup d'etat ; it 
had for a long time past occupied all their thoughts, had been 
the constant subject of their private conversation, of their con- 
ferences with their most intimate confidants. In the morning, 
Charles, kissing his wife before he went away, promised her 
that in an hour he would return, master, at length, of his 
kingdom, and the queen, watch in hand, had counted the 

* Rushworth, i., 3, 477; Pari. Hist, ii., 1010; Journals, Commons; 
Whitelocke, 52. 

t Rushworth, i., 3, 482 ; Ludlow's Mem., 17. 
14 



158 HISTORY OF THE 



minutes till his return.* Now, all had failed ; and though 
the king still persisted in his design, it was without hoping 
anything from it, without knowing how to accomplish it. Of- 
fended, and full of affliction, his wisest friends, Falkland, 
Hyde, Colepepper, kept aloof, and proffered no counsel. A 
proclamation was issued ordering the gates to be closed, and 
that no citizen should give refuge to the accused ; but no one, 
even at court, deceived himself as to the inefficacy of these 
orders ; the very house in which were the five members was 
perfectly well known ;-j- it was not thought any one would 
make his way thither after them. Lord Digby alone was de- 
sirous to expiate by his temerity the imprudence of his advice, 
and his backwardness in the house of peers at the moment of 
the impeachment. He offered the king to go in person, with 
Lunsford and a few cavaliers, to take the members from their 
retreat, and bring them to him dead or alive. But Charles, 
either from some remains of respect for the laws, or from the 
timidity which alternated in his mind with reckless daring, 
refused this proposal, and resolved to go himself the next day 
into the city, and solemnly call upon the common council to 
deliver up the accused, hoping that by his presence and gra- 
cious words he should soften those whose anger he had so little 



oreseen. 



Accordingly, at about ten o'clock, on the 5th Jan., he left 
Whitehall without any guards, and manifesting an entire con- 
fidence in the affection of his subjects. The multitude crowded 
on his way, but cold and silent, or only lifting up their voices 
to conjure him to live in concord with his parliament.:]: In 
some places, threatening cries were heard ; the words, " Pri- 
vilege of parliament ! privilege of parliament !" echoed round 
him, and a man, named Walker, threw into his carriage a 
pamphlet, entitled To your tents, O Israel ! the watchword of 
revolt of the ten tribes of Jerusalem, when they separated 
from Rehoboam.§ On arriving at Guildhall, Charles claimed 
the surrender of the five members, affable and mild in his 
speech, protesting his devotion to the reformed religion, the 
sincerity of his concessions, and promising to act in all things 
according to the laws. No plaudits answered him ; like the 
people, the common council were grave and sorrowful. The 

* Madame de Motteville's Mem., i., 265. f In Coleman-street. 
t Whitelocke, p. 53. § Rushworth, i., 3,479. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 159 

king, addressing one of the sheriffs, said to be an ardent pres- 
byterian, told him he would dine with him. The sheriff 
bowed, and when the hall rose, received him in his house 
with splendor and respect. On his return to Whitehall, 
Charles only obtained from the crowd the same reception as 
before, and re-entered his palace, angry and depressed.* 

The commons had meantime assembled (Jan. 5) ; had voted 
that after so enormous a breach of their privileges, until repa- 
ration had been made, and a trusty guard protected them from 
similar perils, they could not sit with any sense of freedom, 
and had accordingly adjourned for six days. But, though 
they adjourned, they did not cease to act. A committee, 
vested with great powers,f was ordered to establish .itself in 
the city, to make an inquiry into the late outrage, and to ex- 
amine into the general state of the kingdom, especially of 
Ireland, in concert with the citizens, the faithful friends of 
parliament. The committee was installed at Guildhall with 
great pomp (Jan. 6) ; a strong guard was in attendance, and 
a deputation from the common council went to meet it, and 
place at its disposal all the force, all the services of the city.:}: 
Its sittings were as full of bustle as those of the house, every 
member of which had a right to be present ; the place whither 
the five members had retired was close by, and nothing was 
done without their knowledge and advice. § They even went 
several times in person to the committee, and the citizens 
loudly cheered them as they passed, proud to have them 
among them, to be the protectors of their representatives. In 
the midst of this triumph of the commons, their leaders skil- 
fully managed to augment their zeal, by keeping up their 
fears. Every hour, the commons and the city contracted a 
closer alliance and mutually emboldened each other. || At 
last, of its own sole authority, it is said, and as if it had been 
the house itself, the committee published a declaration con- 
taining the result of its inquiry ;1T and the common council 
addressed a petition to the king, complaining of bad councillors, 
of the cavaliers, of the papists, of the new governor of the 

* Clarendon, i., 561 ; Rushworth, i., 3, 479. 

t It was composed of twenty-five members ; two of the king's min- 
isters, Falkland and Colepepper, were upon it ; Rushworth, ut sup. 479. 
X Clarendon, i., 563. § lb. ; Whitelocke, 54. 

II Rushworth, i., 3, 483. IT Clarendon, i., 567, &c. 



160 HISTORY OF THE 



Tower, adopting in a high tone the cause of the five members, 
and demanding all the reforms which the commons had merely 
touched upon.* (Jan. 7, 1642.) 

The king was alone, shut up in Whitehall, disclaimed by 
his more honest partisans. Even the cavaliers, now intimi- 
dated, had dispersed, or kept silence. The king attempted an 
answer to the petition of the common council, and once more 
ordered the arrest of the accused. "j" (Jan. 8.) But his an- 
swers were without influence, his orders without effect. He 
learned that, in two days, the house would resume its sittings, 
and that the five members were to be brought back to West- 
minster in triumph, by the militia, the people, and even the 
watermen of the Thames, of whose entire affection he had 
till then thought himself certain. " What," said he, angrily, 
" do these water-rats, too, forsake me !" and this speech, 
soon repeated among the men, was received by them as an 
insult calling for revenge.:}: Abandoned, humiliated, deserted, 
irritated at the general cry which daily assailed him without 
one voice on his side to oppose it, Charles could not endure 
the idea of seeing his enemies pass triumphant before his 
palace. The queen, alternately furious with anger and 
trembling with fear, conjured him to depart ; the royalists and 
messengers, who had been sent to different parts of the king- 
dom, promised him strength and safety elsewhere ; the cava- 
liers, defeated in London, boasted of their influence in their 
counties ; away from the parliament, said they, the king 
would be free ; without the king, what could the parliament 
do ? The resolution was taken. It was agreed to retire first 
to Hampton Court, and afterwards further if it should be 
found necessary ; secret orders were sent to the governors of 
several places, whose devotion seemed sure ; the earl of New- 
castle set out for the north, where his influence prevailed, and 
on the loth of January, the evening before the return of the 
commons, Charles, accompanied only by his wife, his children, 
and some attendants, quitted London and the palace of White- 
hall, which he was destined never to re-enter, but on his way 
to the scaffold. § 

* Rushworth, i., 3, 480. t lb. 

t Lilly, Observ. on the Life and Death of king Charles ; Mazeres, 
Tracts (1815). 

§ Clarendon, i., 590; Rushworth, i., 3, 564; Journals, Commons 
Jan. 11, 1642, et seq. ; Whitelocke, 54. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. l6l 

The day after his departure, at about two in the afternoon, 
the Thames was covered with armed vessels, escorting the 
five members back to Westminster ; a multitude of boats fol- 
lowed, adorned with flags, and filled with citizens ; along each 
bank of the river marched the London militia, bearing the last 
declarations of parliament at the end of their pikes ;* an ofii- 
cer formed in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, captain Skip- 
pon, had the day before been appointed to command them. 
He was a rough, illiterate man, but daring, of austere morals, 
and very popular in the city. An innumerable crowd closely 
followed this procession ; as they passed Whitehall they 
stopped, shouting, " Where now are the king and his cavaliers ? 
what has become of them ? "f On their arrival at Westmin- 
ster Hall, the five members hastened to eulogize the devotion 
of the city in the public cause, and the sheriffs, introduced 
into the house, received the thanks of the speaker. As they 
departed, another procession filed up ; four thousand knights, 
gentlemen, freeholders, &c., arrived on horseback from Buck- 
inghamshire, Hampden's native county, with a petition to the 
house against papist lords, bad councillors, and in favor of 
their worthy representative ; they had also a petition for the 
upper house, and a third for the king, and all carried on their 
hats a printed oath to live and die with the parliament, who- 
ever might be its enemies.:]: On all sides burst forth that 
proud and joyful enthusiasm which permits, which calls for, 
on the part of the leaders of the people, the boldest resolutions : 
the commons gave way to it with judicious energy, as the 
pilot to the violent but propitious wind. In a few hours they 
had voted that no member, under any pretext, could be ar- 
rested without their consent ; a bill was adopted giving to both 
houses the right of adjourning, in case of need, to any place 
they might think fit ; an address was drawn up to the king, 
that it would please him to withdraw from sir John Byron the 
government of the Tower ; and until his answer should be 
received, Skippon was ordered to place guards around that 
fortress, and narrowly to watch its approaches. Letters were 
despatched to Goring, governor of Portsmouth, forbidding him 

* May, ii., 41 ; Rushworth, i., 3, 484 

t Clarendon, i., 591. 

X lb., ut gup. ; Rushworth, i., 3, 48G. 

14* 



162 HISTORY OF THE 



to receive into that town either troops or ammunition without 
the authority of parliament ; sir John Hotham, a rich and in- 
fluential gentleman of Yorkshire, was ordered to proceed im- 
mediately, and take the command of Hull, an important place, 
the key to the North of England, and which contained large 
arsenals. On the third day (Jan. 13), the house voted that 
the menaced kingdom should without delay be put in a state 
of defence ; the lords refused to sanction this declaration ; but 
this was of little consequence : the commons had effected their 
object, by passing the resolution, and conveying their wishes 
to the people.* 

The commons were not mistaken in anticipating war ; the 
king's only thought now was to prepare for it. In London, 
he was powerless and humiliated ; but no sooner had he left it 
than he was suri'ounded only by his partisans, and no longer 
receiving every day, every hour, proofs of his weakness, he 
freely gave himself up to the hope of conquering with an armed 
force the enemy from whom h6 had just fled without a struggle. 
The cavaliers, too, had reassumed all their presumption ; al- 
ready they seemed to look upon the war as declared, and were 
eager to strike the first blow. The day after the king's de- 
parture, the house learned that two hundred of them, com- 
manded by Lunsford, had marched towards Kingston, twelve 
miles from London, where the military stores of the county 
of Surrey were deposited, as if to take possession of it and to 
establish themselves there ; it was also known that lord Digby 
had gone to meet them on the part of the king, to thank them 
for their zeal, and to concert some hostile plan with them. 
The parliament at once took its measures, and these attempts 
were defeated : lord Digby, energetically denounced, fled be- 
yond sea.f Thinking himself still too near London, the king 
left Hampton Court for Windsor (Jan. 12, 1642) ; Lunsford 
and his cavaliers followed him. Here, in a secret council, it 
was resolved that the queen, taking the crown jewels with 
her, should proceed to Holland, purchase ammunition and 
arms, and solicit the aid of the continental monarchs ; the pre- 
text to be given for this journey was the necessity of taking 
over to the prince of Orange the princess Mary, yet a mere 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 1028 ; Rushworth, i., 3, 469. 

t Rushworth, ut sup. ; Nelson, ii., 845 ; Pari. Hist., ii., 1036 ; 
Whitelocke, 54. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 16J5 

girl, whom he had married six months before.* On his part, 
tlie king, still keeping up his negotiations with parliament, 
was to retire by degrees to the northern counties, where his 
partisans were most numerous, to fix his residence at York, 
and await there the opportunity and the means of acting. 
Everything thus settled, the queen with great secresy made 
preparations for her journey ; and the king invited parliament 
to draAv up a complete statement of its grievances, and thus 
present them to him all at once, promising to do right to them 
without the delay of a single day, and thus put an end to their 
contentions (Jan. 20). f 

The house of lords received this message with joy ; the 
king had numerous friends there ; many others, alarmed or 
wearied out, only desired to terminate the struggle so as to 
leave no anxieties about the future. But the commons, more 
clear-sighted and more resolute, could not believe either that 
the king would grant them all they required, or that, if he 
promised it, he would keep his word. His proposal was, in 
their eyes, merely a stratagem to get rid of them at a blow, 
and, dismissing them, to resume his arbitrary power. They 
refused to concur in the eager thanks of the lords, unless at 
the same time the king was distinctly called upon to transfer 
the command of the Tower, of the royal fortresses, and of the 
militia, to men who possessed the confidence of parliament.:}: 
The peers rejected the amendment, but thirty-two protested 
against its rejection ;§ and the commons, strengthened by the 
support of such a minority, forwarded the petition to the king 
in their own name. His answer was a decided refusal (Jan. 
28)11 as to the government of the Tower and fortresses, and 
vague and evasive objections as to the militia. His sole pur- 
pose evidently was to yield nothing more, and meanwhile to 
gain time. The commons, on their part, did not wish to lose 
time : well served at Windsor, as well as at London — for 
everywhere the opinion of their strength was great — they had 
spies and friends, and were perfectly acquainted with all the 
king's projects, with the meaning of the queen's journey, and 
with the intrigues of the court in the north of the kingdom and 

* Clarendon, i., 653 ; Orleans, Histoire des Revolutions d' Angleterre 
(1694), book ix. 

t Pari. Hist, ii., 1045, et seq. 

i Pari. Hist., ii., 104S. § lb., 1049. || Rushworth, i., 3, 517. 



164 HISTORY OF THE 



on the continent. The danger was pressing ; it might so hap- 
pen that the king would be ready for war before the question 
of the militia was decided, and then, how resist him ? Fears 
more illusory, but nearer at hand, agitated the people ; they 
talked of ammunition removed from the Tower, of plots against 
the lives of the popular leaders ; they were irritated at con- 
quering thus repeatedly to no purpose. A fresh and energetic 
outburst of public feeling, it was thought, would alone suffice 
to surmount the new obstacles which had presented themselves, 
to impel the zealous to action, excite the lukewarm, and intimi- 
date their opponents. Petitions flowed in from all parts ; from 
all the counties, from every class of citizens ; apprentices, lit- 
tle shopkeepers, poor workmen, London porters • even women 
crowded round Westminster Hall with petitions. When these 
last appeared, Skippon, who commanded the guard, was as- 
tonished : " Let us be heard," they cried, " for one woman 
that's here to-day, there will be five hundred to-morrow." 
Skippon went to the house of commons for orders, and, on his 
return, gently persuaded them to retire. But they came again 
two days after ; having chosen Ann Stagg, the wife of a wealthy 
brewer, for their speaker, and bearing a petition, at the end 
of which they had carefully explained their motives : " It may 
be thought strange and unbeseeming our sex," said they, " to 
show ourselves here, bearing a petition to this honorable as- 
sembly ; but Christ purchased us at as dear a rate as he did 
men, and therefore requireth the same obedience for the same 
mercy as of men. We are sharers in the public calamities. 
We do this, not out of self-conceit or pride of heart, as seeking 
to equal ourselves with men, either in authority or wisdom ; 
but, according to our places, to discharge that duty we owe to 
God and the cause of his church." The petition was received ; 
Pym went out to acknowledge it. He said : " Good women, 
your petition, with the reasons, hath been read in the house, 
and is thankfully accepted of, and is come in a seasonable 
time. Repair to your houses, we entreat, and turn your peti- 
tions into prayers at home for us. We have been, are, and 
shall be, ready to relieve you, your husbands, and childi'en." 
They retired in silence — a remarkable instance of reserve 
amidst the wild excitement of popular enthusiasm, of moral 
sobriety amidst the machinations of party.* 

* Almost all these petitions were presented between Jan. 20 and 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 165 

The petitions were all exactly to the same effect ; they all 
demanded the reform of the church, the chastisement of the 
papists, the repression of the malignants. Some went more 
into detail, and in these the house of peers was openly 
threatened : " Let those noble worthies of the peers," said they 
to the commons, " who concur with your happy votes, be 
earnestly requested to join with your honorable house, and to 
sit and vote as one entire body ; which, we hope, will remove 
our destructive fears, and removed, prevent that which ap- 
prehension will make the wisest and peaceablest men to put 
into execution." " We never doubted the commons," cried 
the people at the gates of Westminster, " but everything sticks 
in the lords ; let us have the names of those who hinder the 
agreement between the good lords and the commons."* Even 
in the house of lords, the language of the two parties began 
to be that of war. " Whoever refuses to agree with the com- 
mons as to the militia is an enemy to the state," said the earl 
of Northumberland. He was called upon to explain : " We 
all think the same !" cried his friends, then in the minority on 
this question. The multitude were at the door ; fear seized 
the lords ; several went out, others changed their opinion. 
The lord chancellor, Littleton, himself, with some insignificant 
reservations, voted with the commons, and the bill, at last, re- 
ceived the sanction of the house, as did, a few days afterwards 
(Feb. 5), the bill for the exclusion of the bishops, which had 
been three months in suspense. "j" 

This last was presented to the king by itself (Feb. 7), the 
ordinance respecting the militia not being yet drawn up ; his 
perplexity was great : he had just informed the parliament of 
the queen's approaching journey : he had, to soften them, 
officially given up all proceedings against the five members:}: 
(Feb. 2), he had even consented to appoint, as governor of the 
Tower, sir John Conyers, whom the commons had named§ 
(Feb. 11) ; but his hope in all this had been to elude any great 
question, till the time he should be in a position to refuse doing 
anything at all. The exclusion of the bishops troubled his 

Feb. 5, 1642 ; that of the women, among others, on Feb. 4 ; Journals, 
Commons; Pari. Hist., ii., 1049, et seq. 

* Clarendon, i., 645 ; iii., 74. 

t lb., i., 648 ; Pari. Hist., ii., 1099, 1367. % Rushworth, i., 3, 492. 

§ Pari. Hist, ii., 1087 ; Clarendon, i., 655. 



166 HISTORY OF THE 



conscience : to give up the militia was to place at the disposi- 
tion of his enemies the whole available force of the country. 
Yet he was pressed hard ; his own councillors thought he could 
not refuse ; lord Falkland, still supposing him sincere, con- 
stantly advocated concession ; Colepepper, not particularly 
devout, and inclined to expedients, strongly urged the adoption 
of the bill as to the bishops, saying that the militia were far 
more important, for that everything might be regained by the 
sword, and that then it would be easy to declare void a consent 
exacted by violence. " Is this the advice of Hyde V inquired 
the king ; " No, sire ; I must own I think neither the one bill 
nor the other ought to be sanctioned." " You are quite 
right and I shall act upon your opinion." Colepepper went 
to the queen, pointed out to her the danger which the king, 
which she herself was exposed to, the obstacles which would 
be thrown in the way of her journey, now the only means of 
placing the king in a position to defeat his enemies. The 
vehement emphasis of his gesticulation and of his language 
soon agitated and convinced the queen, as prompt to fear as 
to hope, and, moreover, not over friendly towards the 
Anglican bishops. She rushed to her husband's apartments, 
and, in a passion of tears, implored him to consult their own 
safety and that of their children. Charles could not resist 
her ; he gave way with sorrow, and already repentant, as in 
Strafford's trial, authorized the commissioners to sign the bill 
in his name, said nothing about the militia, and immediately 
departed for Dover* (Feb. 16), where the queen was to 
embark. 

He had scarcely arrived there, when a message from the 
commons followed him ; like Colepepper, they cared much 
more about the militia than about the exclusion of the bishops, 
who were already defeated and in prison. They had hastened 
to draw up their ordinance ; they had set forth in it the names 
of the lieutenants who were to command in each county, and 
solicited its immediate sanction. " I must take time to con- 
sider the matter," said the king ; "I will give my answer 
on my return."^ On his way back, after the queen had 
embarked,:]: he received at Canterbury (Feb. 25) another 
message, still more pressing than the first. He learned at the 

* Clarendon's Memoirs, i., 115. f Pari. Hist., ii., 1083, et seg. 
X The queen embarked Feb. 23. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 167 

same time that the commons objected to the departure of his 
son Charles, prince of Wales, whom he had directed to pro- 
ceed to Greenwich, intending to take him with him into the 
north ; that they were prosecuting the attorney-general, Her- 
bert, for having obeyed his orders in accusing the five mem- 
bers, and that they had intercepted and opened a letter from 
lord Digby to the queen. So much distrust, after so much con- 
cession, offended him as much as though his concessions had 
been sincere. He received the messengers angrily, but with- 
out giving any decisive answer."* On arriving at Greenwich 
(Feb. 26), he found the prince, whom his tutor, the marquis 
of Hertford, notwithstanding the prohibition of the commons, 
on receiving the king's orders, had at once taken thither. At 
length easy as to his wife and children, he sent his answer to 
the parliament ;"j" he consented to entrust the militia to the 
commanders whom it had named, but on condition that he 
iiiight dismiss them, if he saw fit, and that the principal towns 
in the_ kingdom should be excepted from the measure ; in 
these the militia were to remain under the government of their 
charters and of the ancient laws ; then, without awaiting its 
reply, he began, by short stages, his journey to York. At 
Theobalds, twelve commissioners from the parliament over- 
took him (March 1); on receiving his answer, it voted it to be 
a positive refusal ; that, if he persisted in it, it would dispose 
of the militia without consulting him, and that his return to 
London could alone prevent the evils with which the kingdom 
was threatened. The tone of the message was rude and 
abrupt, as if parliament wished to show it knew its strength, 
and was not afraid to use it. " I am so much amazed at this 
message," said the king, " that I know not what to answer. 
You speak of jealousies and fears ! lay your hands to your 
hearts and ask yourselves whether I may not likewise be dis- 
turbed with fears and jealousies ? And if so, I assure you 
this message hath nothing lessened it. As to the militia, I 
thought so much of it before I sent that answer, and am so 
much assured that the answer is agreeable to what in justice 
or reason you can ask, or I in honor grant, that I shall not 
alter it in any point. For my residence near you, I wish it 
might be so safe and honorable, that I had no cause to absent 

* Clarendon, Memoirs, ut sup. 

t Dated Feb. 28; Rushworth, i., 3, 521 ; Clarendon, Memoirs. 



168 HISTOKY OF THE 



myself from Whitehall : ask yourselves whether I have not. 
For my son, I shall take that care of him which shall justify 
me to God, as a father, and to my dominions as a king. To 
conclude, I assure you, upon my honor, that I have no thought 
but of peace and justice to my people, which I shall by all 
fair means seek to preserve and maintain, relying upon the 
goodness and providence of God, for the preservation of myself 
and rights ;" and he continued his journey. A week after 
(March 9), at Newmarket, other commissioners presented 
themselves ; they brought a declaration in which the parlia- 
ment, recapitulating all its grievances, all its fears, justified its 
conduct, and once more conjured the king to return to London, 
to come to an understanding with his people, and thus dissi- 
pate the dark presentiments which agitated all minds. Deep 
feeling pervaded the firm language in which the message was 
couched; it equally manifested itself in the interview between 
the commissioners and the king : the conversation was long, 
urgent, earnest, as of men profoundly moved by the prospect 
of impending rupture, and who were still endeavoring to per- 
suade each other to avert it ; it was evident that though no 
longer hesitating as to their future course, though there were 
no means of reconciliation, though they felt the struggle to be 
inevitable and had made up their minds to go through with 
it, yet both parties felt pain in commencing it, and, though 
without hope, made yet a last effort against it. " What would 
you have ?" said the king. " Have I violated your laws ? have 
I denied to pass any one bill for the ease and security of my 
subjects ? I do not ask you what you have done for me. Have 
any of my people been transported with fears and apprehen- 
sions ? I have offered as free and general a pardon as your- 
selves can devise. God so deal with me and mine, as all my 
thoughts and intentions are upright for the maintenance of 
the true protestant profession, and for the observance and 
preservation of the laws of this land ; and I hope God will 
bless and assist those laws for my preservation."* "But the 
militia, sir ?" said lord Holland. " The militia ? I did not 
deny it." " But if your majesty would come near the par- 
liament ?" "I would you had given me cause, but I am sure 
this declaration is not the way to it. In all Aristotle's Rhe- 

* Rushworth, i., 3, 523, 524 ; Clarendon, Memoirs, i., 129. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 169 

toric there is no such argument of persuasion." "The par- 
liament," said lord Pembroke, " has humbly besought your 
majesty to come near it." " Your declaration hath taught 
me your words are not sufficient." " Will your majesty, then, 
deign to tell us what you would have ?" " I would whip a 
boy in Westminster school that could not tell that by my 
answer ; you are much mistaken, however, if you think my 
answer to that a denial." " Might not the militia be granted 
as desired by parliament, for a time ?" " No, by God ! not 
for an hour ; you have asked that of me in this which was 
never asked of a king, and with which I would not trust my 
wife and children." Then turning towards the commissioners 
of the commons, he said : " The business of Ireland will never 
be done in the way you are in ; four hundred will never do 
that work ; it must be put into the hands of one. If I were 
trusted with it, I would pawn my head to end that work ; and 
though I am a beggar myself, yet, by God, I can find money 
for that."* These last words roused every suspicion ; the 
commissioners saw in them the acknowledgment of hidden 
resources, the intention of throwing parliament into disrepute, 
of imputing to it the troubles of Ireland, and finally, the de- 
sire of being alone at the head of an army, to dispose of it at 
his pleasure. The conference proceeded no further ; the com- 
, missioners returned to London, and the king, continuing his 
journey, arrived at York without any other incident. 

And now commenced, between the parliament and him, a 
struggle hitherto without example in Europe, the clear and 
glorious symptom of the revolution which then took its begin- 
ning, and which was destined to have its accomplishment in 
our own times. The negotiations went on, but without either 
party hoping anything from them, or even proposing to treat. 
It was no longer each other they addressed in their declarations 
and messages ; both appealed to the whole nation, to public 
opinion ; to this new power both seemed to look for their strength 
and their success. The origin and extent of royal power, the 

* This conversation is taken from a pamphlet published in London 
immediately after the return of the commissioners (at W. Gay's, 1642), 
and which contained an account of all that passed between them and 
the king. Tlie printer of this pamphlet was sent for, and questioned 
by the peers ; but on his replying that he had the MS. from the chan- 
cellor's secretary, the house dismissed him. Pari. Hist., ii., 1126; 
Rushworth, i., 3, 526. 
16 



170 HISTOKY OF THE 



privileges of both houses, the limits of the allegiance due from 
subjects, the militia, petitions, the distribution of offices, became 
the subjects of an official controversy, in which the general 
principles of social order, the different kinds of government, 
the primitive rights of liberty, the history, laws, and customs 
of England, were by turns setforth, explained, and commented 
upon. In the interval between the disputes of the two parties 
in parliament, and their physical struggle on the field of battle, 
reason and science were seen to create an interposition, so to 
speak, of several months, suspending the course of events find 
using their ablest endeavors to secure the free adhesion of the 
people, by stamping on one or the other cause the character 
of legitimacy. At the opening of parliament, England had 
neither desired nor even thought of a revolution ; the dissenters 
merely meditated one in the church ; the return to legal order, 
the re-establishment of ancient liberties, the reform of actual 
and pressing abuses, such had been, or at least so it thought, 
the sole wish and hope of the nation. The leaders themselves, 
bolder and more enlightened, scarcely formed any more ex- 
tended projects ; the energy of their will surpassed the am- 
bition of their thoughts ; and they had gone on from day to 
day without any ultimate aim, without system, carried forward 
simply by the progressive development of their situation, and 
to satisfy urgent necessities. When the moment arrived for 
drawing the sword, all were aghast : not that their hearts were 
timid, nor that civil war in the abstract had either in the eyes 
of the parliament or the people anything strange or criminal 
about it ; on the contrary, they read it with pride in the great 
charter, in the history of their country ; more than once they 
had braved their masters, had taken away and given the 
crown ; and those times were so far back, that the misery over- 
clouding them was forgotten, and the people only saw in them 
glorious examples of their energy and their power. But it had 
always been in the name of the laws, of clear and acknow- 
ledged rights, that resistance had been declared ; in achieving 
liberty, England had ever regarded herself as only defending 
her inheritance ; and to these words alone, " law," " legal 
order," had attached that popular and spontaneous respect 
which rejects discussion, and sanctions the boldest designs. 
Now, however, the two parties reciprocally accused each 
other of illegality and innovation, and both with justice ; for 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 171 

the one had violated the ancient rights of the kingdom, and 
would not abjure the maxims of tyranny ; the other claimed, 
in the name of principles as yet altogether indefinite and con- 
fused, liberties and a power till then unknown. Both felt the 
necessity of throwing the mantle of the law over their pre- 
tensions and their acts ; both undertook to justify themselves, 
not only according to reason, but according to law. With 
them, the whole nation rushed eagerly into the lists, agitated 
still more than their leaders with sentiments that seemed to 
conti-adict each other, yet all equally sincere. Scarcely freed 
from an oppression which the laws of their ancestors had con- 
demned but not prevented, they ardently sought for more 
efficacious guarantees ; but it was still to the very laws, whose 
inadequacy had been experienced, that their hope was at- 
tached. New opinions, new ideas were fermenting in their 
minds ; to these they trusted with vivid, pure faith ; they gave 
themselves up with all their might, in all confidingness, to that 
enthusiasm which seeks the triumph of truth, at whatever 
price ; and, at the same time, unassuming in their thoughts, 
tenderly faithful to old customs, full of respect for old insti- 
tutions, they wished to believe, that, far from changing aught 
in them, they were only rendering them true homage, and 
restoring them to vigor. Hence a singular mixture of bold- 
ness and timidity, of sincerity and hypocrisy, in the publications 
of all sorts, official or otherwise, with which England was then 
inundated. The ardor of the national mind was unbounded, 
the movement universal, unprecedented, immoderate ; at Lon- 
don, at York, in all the great towns of the kingdom, pamphlets, 
periodical and occasional journals, were multiplied and diffiised 
in every quarter ;* political, religious, historical questions, 
news, sermons, plans, counsels, invectives — everything found 
a place in them, everything was brought forward and discussed 
in them. Volunteer messengers hawked them about the 
country ; at the assizes, on market days, at the doors of churches, 
the people crowded to buy and read them ; and, amidst this 
universal outburst of thought, this so novel appeal to public 

* The following are the titles of a few of these publications : Mer- 
curius Aulicus — Mercurius Britannicus — Rusticus — Pragmaticus — Po- 
liticus — Publicus ; Diurnal Paper — Diurnal Occurrences — A Perfect 
Diurnal of some Passages in Parliament; London Intelligencer, &c., 
&c. 



172 HISTORY OF THE 



opinion, while at bottom both of proceedings and writings there 
already reigned the principle of national sovereignty grappling 
with the divine right of crowns, yet the statutes, the laws, the 
traditions, the customs of the land, were constantly invoked as 
the only legitimate criteria of the dispute ; and the revolution 
was everywhere, without any one daring to say so, or even 
perhaps owning it to himself. 

In this state of men's minds, the moral situation of parlia- 
ment was a false one, for it was by it, and for its advantage, 
that the revolution was being accomplished ; forced to carry 
it on and disavow it at the same time, its actions and its words 
alternately belied each other, and it fluctuated painfully be- 
tween boldness and cunning, violence and hypocrisy. Con- 
sidered as exceptional maxims and measures, applicable only 
to a period of crisis, and to be laid aside with the necessity of 
the case, its principles were true, and its resolves legitimate ; 
but parties do not rest satisfied v/ith the possession of ephemeral 
legitimacy, nor nations labor with enthusiastic devotion for 
the doctrines and interests of a day ; at the very time that the 
present alone rules and decides their opinions and their con- 
duct, they persuade themselves that these opinions, this conduct, 
have reference to perpetuity, and assume to direct the future 
in the name of eternal truth. Not content with taking pos- 
session of sovereign power, the parliament voted as a principle, 
and as if to define the law of the land, that the command of the 
militia did not belong to the king, that he could not refuse his 
sanction to bills demanded by the people, that the houses, 
without his concurrence, had the right to declare what was 
law ; finally, that it was good and lawful to solicit by petitions 
the change of customs and statutes in force, but that all peti- 
tions for their maintenance should be rejected as nugatory.* 
Notwithstanding the uncertainty and diversity of ancient ex- 
amples, maxims such as these, established as permanent and 
public rights, were evidently contrary to the historical founda- 
tion, the regular state, to the very existence of monarchy. The 
king took advantage of this. In his turn, he spoke, in the 
name of old England, of her laws, her recollections. Able 
and learned champions took up his cause ; Edward Hyde, who 
remained in London, sometimes alone, sometimes in concert 



* Pari. Hist., ii., 1140. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 173 

with Falkland, drew up answers to all the paryamentary pub- 
lications. Rapidly conveyed to York by secret messengers, 
these were privately delivered to the king, who passed the 
night in copying them with his own hand, that no one might 
trace the author, and then published them in the name of his 
council.* Written with talent and perspicuity, sometimes with 
cutting irony, they more particularly aimed at exposing the 
subtle machinations, the artifices, the illegality of the preten- 
sions of parliament. Charles no longer governed, had no 
longer any actual tyranny to palliate ; keeping silence as to 
his own secret views, his ultimate designs, his despotic hopes, 
he could invoke the law against his enemies, now, in their 
turn, the reigning despots. Such was the effect of the royal 
publications, that parliament made every elTort to suppress 
them, while, on the other hand, the king caused the messages 
of parliament to be printed parallel with his answers. "j" The 
royalist party visibly increased ; they soon grew bolder, and 
turned the arms of liberty against their adversaries ; George 
Benyon, a rich merchant in the city, addressed a petition to 
both houses against their ordinance on the militia, and many 
considerable citizens signed it with him.:}: The gentlemen of 
Kent, at the Maidstone assizes (March 25), drew up another 
in favor of the prei'ogative and of episcopacy ;§ a few members 
of parliament, sir Edward Bering among others, who first intro- 
duced the bill against the bishops, openly invited these proceed- 
ings. || The royal pamphlets met with great favor; they were 
pungent, high-toned, in a vein of refined and contemptuous su- 
periority ; even among the populace, abuse of the leaders of the 
commons found welcome and credit ; they repeated the sneers 
about " king Pym," and the " sugar-loaves" he had formerly 
received as presents, and the " 10,000?. of the king's money" 
that he had, it was said, just given as a marriage portion with 
his daughter ; about the cowardice of the earl of Warwick, 
" whose soul was in his shoes," and a thousand other coarse 
imputations, which lately none would have repeated or even 
listened to. IT In both houses, the king's friends showed them- 
selves haughty and irascible ; men who till then had remained 
silent, sir Ralph Hopton, lord Herbert, repelled sternly all in- 

* Clarendon's Mem., i., 131 ; Warwick's Mem., 209. 
tRushworth, i., 3, 751. J Pari. Hist., ii., 1150. § lb., 1147 

II lb. M Pari. Hist., ii., 1164, 1405. 

15* 



174 HISTORY OF THE 



sinuations offensive to his honor. It was clear that in the opi- 
nion of many his cause was gaining ground, and that they would 
uphold it on occasion, for they no longer hesitated to adopt it. 
Parliament took the alarm ; the self-love of the leaders was 
touched ; nursed in popularity, they could not patiently endure 
insult and contempt, or that in this war of the pen, the advan- 
tage should remain with their enemies. To this new danger, 
as much from personal anger as from policy, they opposed 
utter tyranny ; all freedom of discussion ceased ; sir Ralph 
Hopton was sent to the Tower (March 7),* lord Herbert cen- 
sured and threatened (May 20),f George Benyon and sir Ed- 
ward Dering impeached (March 31 and April 26),:}: the petition 
of the county of Kent thrown under the table (March 25). § 
There was a rumor that it was going to be presented again ; 
Cromwell hastened to inform the commons of this report, and 
received orders to prevent its being carried into effect (April 
28). II As yet little noticed in the house, but more able and 
already more deeply engaged than any other in the machina- 
tions of the revolution, it was in its external business, in ex- 
citing the people, in watching, in denouncing, in tricking the 
royalists out of doors, that this man's activity and influence 
were more especially engaged. 

That war was near at hand was no longer doubtful ; the 
two parties could no longer live together, or sit within the 
same walls. Every day members of parliament were leav- 
ing London ; some, disgusted or alarmed, retired to their es- 
tates • others sought elsewhere, far from an arena where they 
were conscious of defeat, fresh arms against their enemies. 
Most of them repaired to the king, nearly all his councillors 
had already joined him. IT An unexpected incident hastened 
this movement, and irrevocably separated the two parties. 
On the 23d of April, the king, at the head of three hundred 
horse, advanced towards Hull, and sent word to sir John Ho- 
tham, the governor of the place, to deliver it into his hands. 
Weak, irresolute, far from inveterate against the crown, and 
without instructions for the regulation of his conduct, sir 
John, in utter perplexity, entreated the king to wait until he 
had communicated his orders to the parliament. But Charles 
continued to advance, and at eleven o'clock appeared under 

* Pari. Hist, ii,, 1118. t lb-. 1242. f lb., 1149, 1188. 

§ lb., 1147. II lb., 1194. IT May, ii., 58. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. l7r- 

the walls. He had already adherents in the town ; the even- 
ing before, his son James, duke of York, his nephew, the 
prince palatine, and lord Newport, had entered it under the 
pretence of passing a day there. The mayor and some of 
the citizens were proceeding towards the gates for the purpose 
of opening them ; Hotham ordered them to return to their 
homes, and, followed by his officers, went on the ramparts. 
There the king, in person, summoned him to admit him. 
Sir John fell upon his knees, and in a great perturbation ex- 
cused himself from doing so, on the ground of the oath he 
had taken to keep Ihe place at the disposition of parliament. 
Violent murmurs arose among the cavaliers who surrounded 
the king ; they threatened sir John, calling him rebel and 
traitor : " Kill him !" they cried to the officers of the garri- 
son, " throw hini over !" but it was the officers who had de- 
cided the governor's resistance. In vain did Charles himself 
endeavor to intimidate or seduce them ; after a long parley, 
he retired to a short distance, and, an hour after, sent a re- 
quest to sir John to admit him with only twenty horse. Ho- 
tham refused this also. " If he had entered with only ten 
men," he wrote to the parliament, " I should no longer have been 
master of the town." 'I ne king returned to the foot of the 
rampart, caused Hotham and his adherents to be proclaimed 
traitors, and the same day addressed a message to parliament 
demanding justice for such an outrage.* 

The parliament fully adopted all the governor had done, 
and returned for answer to the king, that neither the fortresses 
nor arsenals of the kingdom were personal property, which 
he could claim in virtue of any law, as a citizen could his 
field or his house ; that the care of these places had been 
vested in him for the safety of the kingdom, and that the 
same motive might authorize parliament to assume that 
charge. "I" The answer, frank and legitimate enough, was 
equivalent to a declaration of war. It was considered as 
such by both parties. Thirty-two lords, and more than sixty 
members of the commons, Mr. Hyde, among others, departed 
for York.;}: The earls of Essex and Holland, the one lord- 

* Clarendon, i., 792 ; Rushworth, i., 3, 567 ; Pari. Hist, ii., 1197, in 
which is to be seen the letter written by Hotham himself, giving the 
parliament an account of the event. 

tParl. Hist., ii., 11S8, &c. 

JMay, ut sitp. ; Clarendon's Mem. i., 174. On June 16, 1642, a 



176 HISTORY OF THE 



chamberlain, the other first gentleman of|^,the bed-chamber, 
received orders from the king to join him ; he wished to 
secure their persons, and deprive parliament of their support. 
With the sanction of the house, they refused to obey, and 
were forthwith deprived of their offices.* The chancellor, 
Littleton, after long and pusillanimous hesitation, sent the 
great seal to the king, and got away himself the next day. 
This produced much sensation in London, where legal go- 
vernment was generally considered inherent in the possessor 
of the great seal. The peers were agitated and ready to give 
way. But the energy of the commons prevented all indeci- 
sion. The absent members were summoned to return (May 
25 and June 2) ;f on the formal refusal of nine lords to do so, 
they were at once impeached (June 15) ;:}: every citizen was 
forbidden to take up arms at the command of the king (May 
17) ;§ directions were sent into every county for the immedi- 
ate organization of the militia (June 4);|| in many places it 
met and exercised spontaneously. The transfer of the stores 
of Hull to London was ordered, and, notwithstanding all obsta- 
cles, accomplished. U The king had ordered the Westminster 
assizes to be held at York, in order to concentrate around him 
all legal government ; but the parliament opposed the order, 
and was obeyed.** Finally, the commons appointed a com- 
mittee to negotiate a loan in the city, without any statement 
as to its intended application (May 31) ;ff and commissioners 
were dispatched to York, all rich and influential gentlemen of 
the county, with orders to reside near the king, despite 
anything he might say to the contrary, and to send word to 
parliament of whatever they should observe (May 2).:j:| 

formal appeal to the house of commons certified the absence of sixty- 
five members to be without any known and legitimate excuse ; it was 
proposed that they should not re-enter the house till they had justified 
the motives of their absence ; and this motion passed by a majority of 
fifty-five ; some proposed that they should each be fined twenty-five 
pounds ; but this proposition was negatived by a majority of twenty- 
five; Pari. Hist, ii., 1373. 

*Parl. Hist, ii., 1171 ; Clarendon, i., 739. 

tParl. Hist, ii., 1296, 1327. 

t lb., 1368. § lb., 1235. !| lb., 1328. 

IT lb., 1319. ** lb., 1233. tt lb., 1323. 

Jt These commissioners were the lords Howard and Fairfax, sir 
Hugh Cholmondley, sir Henry Cholmondley, and sir Philip Stapleton ; 
Pari. Hist, ii., 1206, 1210, 1212. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. , l^T 



The firmness of the commissioners was equal to the perils 
of their mission. " Gentlemen," said the king, when they 
arrived (May 9),* " what do you want here ? I command you 
to depart." On their refusal : " If you will positively disobey 
me," said he, " I advise you not to make any party, or hinder 
my service in the country, for if you do, I'll clap you up." 
They answered respectfully, but remained, daily insulted, 
often thi'eatened, seldom at liberty to go out, but managing to 
get information as to all that was passing, and to send the 
intelligence up to London. All York, like all London, was in 
active motion ; the king began to levy a guard ; but not ven- 
turing absolutely to command this service, he had called to- 
gether the gentlemen of the neighborhood, that he might obtain 
it from their zeal.f The meeting was numerous and noisy 
(May 15) ; :j: loud acclamations greeted every word the king 
said ; the parliamentary commissioners were hooted when they 
made their appearance. But that same day there came to 
York several thousand freeholders and farmers, whom the 
grandees had not thought fit to summon ; they had, they said, 
the same right as the gentlemen to deliberate on the affairs of 
the county, and presented themselves, accordingly, at the door 
of the hall in which the royalists had assembled. Entrance 
was denied them ; they assembled elsewhere, and protested 
against the measures they heard were being resolved upon by 
the gentry. Even the latter were divided ; for to the propo- 
sition for levying a guard, more than fifty gentlemen replied 
by a refusal, signed with their names ; at the head of the list 
appeared sir Thomas Fairfax, then young and unknown, but 
at heart the brave and sincere patriot he afterwai'ds proved 
himself.§ Charles, intimidated at this aspect of affairs, an- 
nounced another meeting, to which all the freeholders should 
be summoned : the parliament commissioners were forbidden 
to attend, but the meeting being held on Heyworth Moor 
(June 3), near their residence, their friends brought them 
word what was passing, and sought their advice how to pro- 
ceed. More than forty thousand men were present, freeholders, 
farmers, citizens, on foot, on horseback, some in groups, others 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 1222 ; Clarendon, 249. f Clarendon, i., 832. 

X May, ii., 54. 

§ From a letter of the York Committee, dated May 13 ; Pari. Hist., 
ii., 1226, 1233. 



178 • HISTORY OF THE 



running to and fro to collect their friends. The cavaliers soon 
perceived that a petition was circulating amongst them, be- 
seeching the king to banish all thought of war, and to reconcile 
himself with the parliament. They burst into invective and 
menaces, rode violently in upon the groups, snatching the 
copies of the petition from the hands of those who were read- 
ing it, and declaring that the king would not receive it,* 
Charles arrived, annoyed and perplexed, not knowing what to 
say to this multitude, whose presence and turbulence already 
offended his impracticable hauteur. Having read a cold, 
equivocal declaration, he was hastily withdrawing to avoid 
any reply, when young Fairfax, managing to get near him, 
fell suddenly on one knee, and placed the people's petition on 
the pommel of his saddle, thus braving, even at his feet, the 
king's displeasure, who urged his horse roughly against him, 
to force him to retire, but in vain.f 

So much boldness in the king's presence, in the county most 
devoted to his cause, intimidated the royalists, particularly 
those just arrived from London, with their minds full of the 
power and energy of parliament! It was quite enough, they 
thought, to have given the king so perilous a token of their 
zeal as to come and join him ; they did not wish to compromise 
themselves further, and, once at York, showed themselves cold 
and timid.:}: Charles requested from them a declaration of the 
motives which had constrained them to leave London ; he 
wanted it for the purpose of showing that after so much tumult, 
such violence, the parliament being no longer free had ceased 
to be legal. They signed it, but the next day several of them 
informed the king that if he published it they should be obliged 
to deny it. " What, then, would you have me do with it ?" 
asked Charles, angrily ; but they persisted, and the declaration 
did not appear.^ Notwithstanding the concourse and boast- 
ings of the cavaliers, nothing was done ; neither money, arms, 
nor ammunition, not even provisions, were to be found at York ; 
the king had scarcely enough to furnish his own table and to 

* In the sixth letter of the York committee to the parliament, dated 
June 4 ; and in a letter of sir John Bourchier to his cousin sir Thomas 
Barrington, member of the house of commons of the same date ; Pari. 
Hist.,ii., 1345,1353, 

t Carte's Life of Ormond, i., 357. f Clarendon, i., 1021. 

§ lb., 1022. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 179 

provide for the ordinary expenses of his household.* The 
queen had sold some of the crown jewels in Holland, but such 
was the influence of the menaces of parliament, that a long 
time elapsed before she could send the amount to the king.-]- 
He forbade all his subjects to obey the ordinance respecting 
the militia (May 27),^ and himself gave commissions to the 
chief royalists in every county to levy and organize it in his 
name.§ But immediately afterwards, to palliate the effect of 
this measure, he protested that he had no thought of war ; and 
the lords at York declared, by an official manifesto, carefully 
circulated, that to their knowledge no preparations, no pro- 
ceedings announced any such intention. || So much indecision 
and deception did not arise from weakness alone ; ever since 
the ai'rival of the seceders from parliament, Charles had been 
tormented with the most conflicting councils : convinced that 
his most secure strength lay in the respect of the people for 
legal order, the lawyers, magistrates, and more temperate men 
were of opinion that henceforth, strictly observing the laws 
himself, he should throw upon parliament alone the discredit 
of violating them : the cavaliers loudly insisted that delay 
would ruin everything, that on all occasions it was best to 
anticipate the enemy ; and Charles, unable to give up the sup- 
port of either class of advisers, essayed by turns to satisfy each. 
The situation of parliament had, on the contrary, become 
greatly simplified ; the departure of so many royalist members 
had left the leaders of the revolution in undisturbed possession 
of power ; a few dissenting voices were still' now and then 
heard, but reduced to the melancholy task of deploring and 
warning ; the house scarcely deigned to make them any reply 
whatever. A decided majority deeming war inevitable, boldly 
accepted it, though with very different views and feelings. 
To keep up appearances, a committee was appointed to devise 
means of preventing it (May 27) jIF proposals of accommoda- 
tion, in nineteen articles, were even drawn up and formally 

* Clarendon, i., 1022. t lb. 

f Rushworth, i., 3,550. 

§ The first commission of this kind was given to lord Hastings, for 
the county of Leicester, June 11 ; Rushworth, i., 3, 655. 

II This declaration, dated June 15, was signed by forty-five lords or 
members of the council; Pari. Hist, ii., 1373 ; Clarendon, i., 1022. 

H Pari Hist., ii., 1319. 



180 HISTORY OF THE 



sent to the king (June 2).* But while awaiting his answer, 
they continued to suppress every petition for the maintenance 
of peace,'!' and military preparations were pushed forward 
openly and vigorously. Charles had offered to go in person to 
suppress the Irish rebellion, every day increasing in violence ; 
his offer was rejected (April 15)4 He refused to appoint lord 
Warwick, whom the commons had recommended, commander 
of the fleet (March 31) ; Warwick assumed the command, 
notwithstanding his refusal. § The lord mayor, Gourney, had 
the boldness to publish in London the king's commission, order- 
ing the raising of the militia for his service and in his name ; 
he was impeached, sent to the Tower, dismissed his office, and 
alderman Pennington, a zealous puritan, put in his place 
(Aug. 18). II The city lent 100,000Z. (June 4) ;ir 100,000/. 
were taken from the funds destined for the relief of Ireland 
(July 30) ;** a subscription was opened in both houses (June 
10) ; each member, addressed in turn, was requested to state 
his intention at once. Some refused : " If there be occasion," 
said sir Henry Killigrew, " I shall provide myself with a good 
horse and a good sword, and make no question I shall find a 
good cause ;" but, having said this, he felt it prudent to retire 
to his country seat, for after such a speech he could not have 
passed through the streets of London without absolute danger. ■|""|' 
The ardor of the people was at its height ; in the city as at 
Westminster, the withdrawal of the royalist members had dis- 
couraged their partisans. The parliament made an appeal to 
the patriotism of the citizens ; money, plate, jewels, everything 
was put in requisition to equip some squadrons of horse, under 
the promise of interest at eight per cent. The pulpits resounded 
with the exhortations of the preachers ; the amount realized 
exceeded the demands of the most enthusiastic, the expecta- 
tions of the most sanguine ; during ten whole days there was 
a constant influx of plate to Guildhall ; there were not enough 
men to receive it, not room enough to hold it ; poor women 
brought their wedding-rings, their gold or silver hair-pins; 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 1324; May, ii., 75. 

t Among others, a petition prepared at the beginning of June, in the 
county of Somerset ; Pari. Hist., ii., 1366. 

t Pari. Hist., ii., 1169. § lb., 1164; May, ii., 94 

II Pari. Hist., ii., 1203 ; State Trials, iv., 159. , 

TT Pari. Hist., ii., 130S. ** May, ii., 121 ; Pari. Hist., ii., 1443. ' 
tt Clarendon, i., 1016. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 181 

numbers had to wait a long time before their offerings could be 
taken out of their hands.* Informed of this success on the part 
of the Commons, Charles was willing to attempt the same means ; 
but enthusiasm is not a matter of imitation. The university 
of Oxford sent its plate to the king ; following its example, 
Cambridge, also, had its plate packed up ; part of it, indeed, 
was already gone, when Cromwell, ever vigilant, arrived sud- 
denly, and prevented them from sending away any more."]" 
The king's commissioners had the greatest difficulty in col- 
lecting, from one country-seat to another, a few trifling contri- 
butions ; and, scoffing at the niggards, a futile and dangerous 
gratification for a defeated court, was the only consolation left 
to the cavaliers. 

The propositions for accommodation reached York ;:{: they 
surpassed the predictions of the most hot-headed royalists, and 
deprived the most moderate of hope. The parliament de- 
manded the complete destruction of prerogative, and that power 
should rest entirely in its hands, the creation of new peers, 
the appointment or dismissal of all public officers whatsoever, 
the education and marriage of the king's children ; that in 
military, civil, and religious affairs, nothing was to be done 
without the formal permission of parliament. Such was, at 
bottom, the true aim, and was one day to be the inestimable 
result of the revolution ; but the time was not yet come when 
this substitution of parliamentary for royal government could 
be accomplished by the natural working of institutions, and 
the predominant, though indirect, influence of the commons on 
the daily exercise of power. Not in a position to impose its 
leaders upon the crown as state advisers, the national party 
felt itself constrained to subject the crown officially to its do- 
minion, convinced it could not otherwise be secure ; a falla- 
cious and impracticable method, calculated to no other end 
than to plunge the state in anarchy, but at this time the only 
plan which its ablest members could devise. Reading the 
proposals, the king's eyes flashed with anger, his countenance 
was suffused with a deep crimson : " These being past," he 
said, " we may be waited on bare-headed ; we may have our 

* May, iii., 81 ; Clarendon, i., 1016 ; Whitelocke, 60. 
t May, ii., 108 ; Pari. Hist., ii., 1453 ; Querela Cantabrigiensis (1685), 
182 ; Barwick's Life (1724), 24. 
X They were presented to the king on the 17th of June. 
16 



182 HISTORY OF THE 



hand kissed, the style of ' majesty ' continued to us, and * the 
king's authority declared by both houses of parliament,' may 
still be the style of your commands ; we may have swords 
and maces carried before us, and please ourselves with the 
sight of a crown and sceptre (and yet even these twigs would 
not long flourish, when the stock upon which they grew was 
dead) ; but as to true and real power, we should remain but 
the outsides, but the picture, but the sign of a king."* He 
broke off all further negotiation. 

The parliament expected no other answer. As soon as it 
received it, all hesitation, even in form, disappeared ; civil 
war was put to the house (July 9). One voice alone, the 
same which in the opening of the session had first denounced 
public grievances, was now lifted in opposition. " Mr. Speak- 
er," said sir Benjamin Rudyard, " I am touched, I am pierced 
with an apprehension of the honor of the house and success 
of this parliament ; but that we may better consider the con- 
dition we are in, let us set ourselves three years back. If any 
man then could have credibly told us, that within three years 
the queen shall be gone out of England into the Low Coun- 
tries, for any cause whatsoever ; the king shall remove from 
his parliament, from London to York, declaring himself not 
to be safe here ; that there shall be a total rebellion in Ire- 
land ; such discord and distempers both in church and state 
here, as now we find — certainly we should have trembled 
at the thought of it ; wherefore it is fit we should be sensible 
now we are in it. On the other side, if any man then could 
have credibly told us, that within three years ye shall have 
a parliament, it would have been good news ; that Ship-Mo- 
ney shall be taken away by an act of parliament, the reasons 
and grounds of it so rooted out, as that neither it, nor any- 
thing like it, can ever grow up again ; that monopolies, the 
high commission court, the star-chamber, the bishops' votes, 
shall be taken away ; the council table regulated and re- 
strained, the forests bounded and limited, ye shall have a tri- 
ennial parliament, nay, more than that, a perpetual parliament, 
which none shall have the power to dissolve but yourselves — 
we should have thought this a dream of happiness. Yet, now 
we are in the real possession of it, we do not enjoy it. We 

* Rushworth, i., 3, 728. 



ENGLISH EE VOLUTION. 183 

stand upon further security, whereas the very having of these 
things is a convenient, fair security, mutually securing one 
another. Let us beware we do not contend for such a hazard- 
ous, unsafe security as may endanger the loss of what we 
have already. Though we had all we desire, we cannot make 
a mathematical security : all human caution is susceptible of 
corruption and failing. God's providence will not be bound ; 

success must be his Mr. Speaker, it now behoves us 

to call up all the wisdom we have about us, for we are at the 
very brink of combustion and confusion. If blood begins 
once to touch blood, we shall presently fell into a certain 
misery, and must attend an uncertain success, God knows 
when, and God knows what ! Every man here is bound in con- 
science to employ his utmost endeavors to prevent the effusion 
of blood. Blood is a crying sin, it pollutes a land. Let us 
save our liberties and our estates, but so as we may save our 
souls too. Now I have clearly delivered my own conscience, 
I leave every man freely to his."* Vain appeal of a wor- 
thy man, whose only course now was to retire from an 
arena henceforth too agitated for his calm, pure mind. Other 
anticipations, other fears, equally legitimate, though allied to 
more headlong, less virtuous passions, imperiously dominated 
the national party ; and the day was come, in which good and 
evil, salvation and peril, were so obscurely confounded and 
intermixed, that the firmest minds, incapable of disentan- 
gling them, were made the instruments of Providence, who 
alternately chastises kings by their people, and people by 
their kings. Only forty-five members in the commons shared 
the scruples of Rudyard ;f and in the house of peers the earl 
of Portland alone protested.:}: War measures were forthwith 
adopted ; the houses seized,, for their own use, all the public 
revenues ;§ the counties were ordered to provide arms and 
ammunition, and to be ready at the first signal. Under the 
title of the covijnittee of safety, five peers and ten members of 
the house of commons were charged with the care of the pub- 
lic defence, and to see the orders of parliament executed (July 

* Pari. Hist, ii., 1417. 

t The levying of 10,000 volunteers in London was voted in the com- 
mons, by 125 to 45 ; ib., ii., 1409. 

X Pari. Hist., ii., 1414. § lb., 1349. 



184 HISTOEY OF THE 



4, 1642).* Finally, the formation of an army was decreed, 
to consist of twenty regiments of foot, of about a thousand 
men each, and of seventy-five squadrons, each of sixty horse. 
Lord Kimbolton, lord Brook, sir John Merrick, Hampden, 
Holies, Cromwell, leaders of the people in the camp as well 
as at Westminster, received commands in it. The earl of 
Essex was appointed general-in-chlef.l 

* The five lords were the earls of Northumberland, Essex, Pem- 
broke, Holland, and viscount Say ; the ten members of the commons, 
Hampden, Pym, Holies, Martin, Fiennes, Pierpoint, Gl'yn, sir William 
Waller, sir Philip Stapleton, and sir John Merrick. 

t The reader will doubtless feel an interest in reading the history of 
the commanders of this truly national army ; it will be found in the 
Appendix, No. VI. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. 185 



BOOK THE FOURTH. 
1642—1643. 

Breaking out of the civil war — The king raises his standard at Notting- 
ham — Battle of Edgehill — Alarms in London — Fight of Brentford — 
Attempts at negotiation — Character of the civil vs^ar — The queen 
returns from the continent — Negotiations at Oxford — Distrust of the 
Earl of Essex — Internal dissensions of parliament — Royalist conspi- 
racy in the city — Death of Hampden — Repeated defeats of the par- 
liament — Its energy — Efforts of the partisans of peace in parliament 
— Project of the king to march upon London — The project defeated 
— Siege of Gloucester — Raised by Essex — Battle of Newbury — Death 
of Lord Falkland — Alliance of Parliament with the Scots — Trium- 
phant return of Essex to London. 

On hearing of these arrangements, the king, freed from all 
uncertainty, in his turn displayed a greater degree of vigor. 
A small supply of stores and ammunition had reached him 
from Holland ; the queen promised more.* The marquis of 
Hertford, the earl of Northampton, lord Strange, sir Ralph 
Hopton, sir Henry Hastings, the commissioners whom the 
king had despatched to raise troops in his name, met with 
some success in the western and northern counties. f Goring, 
the governor of Portsmouth, had declared in his favor. ^ The 
cavaliers were rising in all directions ; they spread over the 
country, entered by force the houses of the friends of the par- 
liament, carried off money, horses, arms, and brought them 
to York, proud of their booty and of their easy victories. 
Charles at once comprehended that such disorders would 
greatly injure his cause, and to repress them and at the same 
time excite the zeal of the royalists, he made a progress in 
person through the counties of York, Leicester, Derby, Not- 
tingham, and Lincoln, everywhere calling the nobility together, 
thanking them for their fidelity, and exhorting them to be 
orderly and prudent ; more active, more affable, than was his 
usual habit, conversing even with the common people, and 

* Clarendon, i., 1051. t May, ii., 109. 

J Clarendon, i., 1113; Pari. Hist, ii., 1440. 
36* 



186 HISTORY OF THE 



everywhere proclaiming his firm attachment to the religion 
and laws of the country.* These gatherings, these speeches, 
the gentry forsaking or fortifying their houses, the citizens 
rebuilding the walls of their towns, the roads covered with 
armed travellers, the daily exercise of the militia, all pre- 
sented the aspect of declared war, and at the same time, at 
every moment, in all parts of the kingdom, gave occasion to 
it. Blood had already been spilt in several encounters, more 
like broils than battles. f The king, by two fruitless attempts 
on Hull and Coventry, had already given parliament occasion 
to charge him as the aggressor. | The two parties equally 
dreaded this reproach : both ready to risk everything to main- 
tain their rights, both trembling at having to answer for the 
future. At last, on the 23d of August, Charles resolved 
formally to call his subjects to arms, by erecting the royal 
standard at Nottingham. At six in the evening, on the sum- 
mit of the hill which overlooks the town, surrounded by eight 
hundred horse and a small body of militia, he first caused his 
proclamation to be read. The herald had already begun ; a 
scruple arose in the king's mind ; he took the paper, and 
slowly corrected several passages on his knee, then returned 
it to the herald, who had great difiiculty in reading the correc- 
tions. The trumpets sounded, the standard was brought 
forward, bearing this motto : " Render unto Csesar the things 
which are Csesar's ;" but no one knew where to erect it, nor 
the precise form of the ancient ceremony of the lord paramount 
assembling his vassals. The sky was clouded, the wind blew 
with violence. At last, they planted the standard in the 
interior of the castle, on the top of a tower, after the example 
of Richard III., the latest known precedent. The next day 
the wind blew it down. " Why did you put it there ?" asked 
the king ; " it should have been set up in an open place, 
where every one might have approached it, not in a prison ;" 
and he had it taken out of the castle, just outside the park. 
When the heralds sought to plant it in the ground, they found 
that the soil was a mere rock. With their daggers, they dug 
a little hole, in which to fix the staff", but it would not stand, 
and for several hours they were obliged to hold it up with 
tlieir hands. The spectators withdrew, their minds disturbed 

* May, ii., 89. f Whitelocke, 62. X Pad. Hist., ii., 1456. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. " 187 

by evil foi'ebodings.* The king passed some days at Notting- 
ham, in fruitless expectation that the country would answer 
his appeal. The parliamentary army was forming a few 
leagues off at Northampton, and already numbered several 
regiments. " If they choose to attempt a coup-de-main," said 
sir Jacob Astley, major-general of the royal army, " I would 
not answer for his majesty not being taken in his bed.f Some 
members of the council urged him to try negotiation once 
more. " What, already," said the king, " even before the 
war is begun !',' They insisted, on the ground of his weak- 
ness. Four deputies:}: proceeded to London (Aug. 25), but 
returned unsuccessful ; one of them, lord Southampton, had not 
even been allowed to deliver his message pei'sonally to the 
house. § The king quitted Nottingham towards the middle of 
September, and, notwithstanding his regret at removing 
further from London, established his head quarters at Shrews- 
bury, understanding that the western counties showed more 
zeal in his cause. 

The earl of Essex had now been at the head of his army 
for more than a week • when he left London (Sept. 9), an 
immense crowd accompanied him with loud acclamations, 
waving in the air orange streamers, the color of his house. 
Whoever wore any other color was suspected and insulted. |1 
At Northampton he found nearly twenty thousand men assem- 
bled. A parliamentary committee was associated with him, 
which accompanied him wherever he went, but acted under 
his judgment, and was invested with no counter-authority. IT 
His instructions were to transmit a petition to the king con- 
juring him to return to London, and if he refused to follow 
him everywhere, and " by battle or otherwise rescue his 
majesty, his two sons the prince of Wales and the duke of 
York, from their perfidious councillors, and bring them back 
to the parliament."** 

* Rushworth, i., 3, 783 ; Clarendon, i., 1127; Lilly, Observ. on the 
Life and Death of King Charles ; Mazeres, Select Tracts, i. 

t Clarendon, ii., 2. 

j The eaiis of Southampton and Dorset, sir John Colepepper, and 
sir William Uvedale. 

§ Pari. Hist, ii., 1458. || Whitelocke, 59. 

IT Pari. Hist., ii., 1573 ; the committee was composed of twelve lorda 
and twenty-four members of the commons. 

** Pari. Hist, ii., 1471. 



188 HISTORY OF THE 



The petition was not even presented ; the king declared he 
would not receive one from the hands of men whom he had 
proclaimed traitors (Oct. 16).* At Shrewsbury he had gained 
strength and confidence. From the west and the north a 
great number of recruits had at length arrived ; to equip 
them, he had taken, not without resistance, the arms of the 
militia of sevei*al counties ; some parliamentary supplies, des- 
tined for Ireland, which were on their way through the west 
to embark at Chester, had fallen into his hands. The catholics 
of Shropshire and Staffordshire had advanced him 5000?. ; 
for a peerage, a gentleman had paid him 60001. ; and even 
from London his party had secretly sent him money. About 
twelve thousand men were assembled under his banners. f 
Prince Rupert, his nephew,:}: lately arrived from Germany 
(beginning of Sept.), at the head of the cavalry, overran the 
neighboring country, already odious for his pillaging and 
brutality, but at the same time already dreaded for his daring 
courage. Essex advanced but slowly, as if rather following 
than desirous of overtaking his enemy. On the 23d of Sep- 
tember he arrived at Worcester, at a few leagues only from 
the king, where he spent three weeks without making any 
movement whatever. Emboldened by this inaction, by the 
success of a few skirmishes, and the improved aspect of his 
affairs, Charles resolved to advance upon London, and finish 
the war at one blow ; and he was already on his third day's 
march thither, when Essex turned back after him to defend 
the parliament. 

The greatest agitation prevailed in London ; none there 
expected this so sudden peril ; the parliamentary party were 
astonished, the royalists began to put themselves in motion, 
the people were alarmed. But the fear of the people is easily 
turned into anger ; of this tendency the parliament availed 
itself. Firm and impassioned in action as in speech, it imme- 
diately took measures of defence against the king, and of rigor 
against the malignants, as it called the royalists. All whc 
had not subscribed to the voluntary contributions, were taxed 
an arbitrary amount, and at once called upon to pay ; those 

* Pari. Hist , ii., 1484. 

t Clarendon, ii., passim ; Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs. 
I Second son of Frederick V., under Palatine, king of Bohemia, and 
of Elizabeth, sister to Charles I. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 189 

who refused were sent to prison ; the suspected were disarmed ; 
requisitions of every kind took place ; all the stables in the 
town and suburbs were visited, and the horses fit for service 
seized. Fortifications were hastily raised, a crowd of men, 
women and children working at them with ardor ; chains 
were hung across the streets, barricades erected ; the militia, 
kept constantly on foot, were ready to march at a moment's 
notice.* 

Suddenly, on the morning of the 24th of October, a report 
arrived that a great battle had been fought, the parliamentary 
army totally defeated, many officers killed and made prison- 
ers : the news came from Uxbridge, a few miles from Lon- 
don ; left there, it was said, by sir James Ramsey, a Scotch- 
inan, and colonel of a regiment of horse, as he passed through 
the town in his flight. Nearly at the same moment, other 
intelligence came of a very different character, but equally 
uncertain : Essex had gained a complete victory ; the rem- 
nant of the king's army was in full retreat. The news came 
from people who had been met on the Uxbridge road, gallop- 
ing with all speed to announce this wonderful success at Lon- 
don, f 

The parliament, as ignorant of the real truth as the people, 
ordered all the shops to be closed, the militia to be at their 
posts, the citizens to wait for orders, and required from each 
of its members a personal declaration of firm adhesion to the 
earl of Essex and his cause, whatever had happened or might 
happen.:}: It was not till the next day (Oct. 26) that lord 
Wharton and Mr. Strode brought from the army an official 
account of the battle and its results. 

It had been fought on the 23d of October, near Keynton, 
in Warwickshire, at the foot of the eminence called Edgehill ; 
not till he reached this place, after a march of ten days, dur- 
ing which both armies, always within a few leagues of each 
other, had been completely ignorant of each other's move- 
ments, had Essex overtaken the king's troops. Though he 
had left behind him part of his artillery and several regi- 
ments, amongst others that of Hampden, he resolved upon im- 
mediate attack, and the king, at the same instant, had adopted 
the same resolution. Both were eager for a battle, Essex in 

* Pari. Hist., ii., 1478 : Whitelocke, 63. 

t Whitelocke, 64. t Pari. Hist., ii., 1494. 



190 HISTORY OF THE 



order to save London, Charles to put an end to the obstacles 
he met with in a country so adverse to his cause, that the 
blacksmiths left their homes to avoid shoeing his horses. Com- 
mencing about two in the afternoon, the conflict was fiercely 
continued till the evening ; the parliamentary* cavalry, weak- 
ened by the desertion of sir Faithful Fortescue's regiment, 
which, at the moment of charging went over in a body to the 
enemy, were put to flight by prince Rupert ; but in his reck- 
less hot-headedness, excited, too, by the desire of pillage, he 
pursued them more than two miles, without troubling himself 
what was going on behind him. Stopped, at last, by Hamp- 
den's regiment coming up with the artillery, the prince re- 
turned towards the field of battle ; and there found the royal 
infantry broken and dispersed, the earl of Lindsey, command- 
er-in-chief, mortally wounded and a prisoner, and the king's 
standard in the hands of the parliamentarians ; the king him- 
self had, at one time, been left almost by himself and in great 
danger of being taken. Essex's reserve remained alone in 
good order on the field. Charles and his nephew in vain en- 
deavored to persuade their squadrons to make another charge ; 
they had returned all in confusion, the soldiers seeking their 
officers, the officers their soldiers, the horses falling with 
weariness ; nothing could be done with them. The two 
armies passed the night on the field of battle, both uneasy as 
to the morrow, though both claimed the victory. The par- 
liament had lost more men, the king more distinguished per- 
sons and officers. At daybreak, Charles surveyed his camp ; 
a third of the infantry and many cavaliers were missing ; not 
that all of them had perished, but the cold, the want of pro- 
visions, the violence of the first shock, had disgusted a great 
number of the volunteers, and they had dispersed.* The 
king wished to recommence the fight, in order to continue his 
march upon London without obstruction, but he soon saw that 
this was out of the question. In the parliamentary camp the 
same question was debated ; Hampden, Holies, Stapleton, most 
of the militia officers and members of the commons, conjured 
Essex immediately to resume the attack : " The king," they 
said, " is unable to withstand it ; three fresh regiments have 
joined us, and he will fall into our hands, or be forced to ac- 



Rushworth, ii., 3, 33 ; May, ut sup. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 191 

cept our conditions ; the speedy termination of the war can 
alone save the country evils, the parliament risks, which it is 
impossible now to foresee." But the professional men, the 
officers formed in the continental wars, colonel Dalbier and 
others, were of a different opinion ; according to them, it was 
already a great thing to have fought so glorious a battle with 
mere recruits ; London was saved ; but its safety had been 
dearly bought ; the soldiers, still altogether novices, were as- 
tounded and dispirited ; they would not recommence the fight 
so soon with a good heart ; the parliament had but one ai'my, 
it should be trained to war, and not risk all at once. They 
spoke with authority ; Essex adopted their advice,* and re- 
moved his head-quarters to Warwick, in the rear of the royal 
army, but so as to follow its movements. A few days after- 
wards, the king, advancing towards London, though without 
any design of proceeding thither at the moment, established 
his head-quarters at Oxford, of all the large towns in the king- 
dom the most devoted to his cause. 

At London, as well as at Oxford, public thanksgivings were 
offered up ; for parliament, said its . friends to one another, 
had gained a great deliverance, though a small victory. They 
soon, however, discovered that this deliverance was not a 
complete one.f Nearer the metropolis than the army of Es- 
sex, the king's troops spread over the country ; most of the 
deserters had rejoined their regiments, cured of their first 
fears, by the hope of booty. Banbury, Abingdon, Henley, 
places they thought sure, opened their gates to the king, with- 
out striking a blow. The garrison of Reading, commanded 
by Henry Martyn, a particular friend of Cromwell's, and a 
morose, snarling demagogue, basely fled at the mere approach 
of a few squadrons ',X ^^e king transferred his head-quarters 
thither. Prince Rupert scoured and pillaged the country, up 
to the very environs of London. § The city got alarmed ; in 
the house of lords pacific suggestions were made and listened 
to (Oct. 29). II Essex was ordered to draw nearer with his 
troops; and, meantime, the parliament resolved to request a 
safeguard from the king, for six deputies, appointed to open a 
negotiation. He refused to include in the number sir John 
Evelyn, whom the evening before (Nov. 2) he had proclaim- 

* Whitelocke, 64. f lb. t Clarendon, ii., 104. 

§ Whitelocke, 64. || Pari. Hist., iii., 1. 



192 HISTORY OF THE 



ed a traitor.* The commons withdrew, their proposal : Essex 
had arrived (Nov. 7). The lord mayor called a general 
meeting of citizens at Guildhall (Nov. 8). Two members of 
parliament, lord Brook and sir Harry Vane, attended, to ex- 
cite their courage, and exhort them to march out and range 
themselves under the general's standard : " For he has ob- 
tained," said lord Brook, " the greatest victory that was ever 
gotten ; near two thousand (I love to speak with the least) on 
their side slain, and I am confident not a hundred on our side, 
unless you will take in women, children, carmen, and dogs, 
for they slew the very dogs and all ; — if you take in women, 
children, carmen, and dogs, then they slew about two hun- 
dred. The general's resolution is to go out to-morrow, and 
do again as much as he hath done ; all this is for your sakes ; 
for himself, he can be a freeman, he can be a gentleman, he 
can be a great man ; he can go where he will ; therefore it 
is only for your sakes he is resolved to go out to-morrow, 
Wheri you hear the drums beat (for it is resolved the drums 
shall beat to-morrow), say not, I beseech you, I am not of the 
trained band, nor this, nor that, nor the other, but doubt not 
to go out to the work, and fight courageously, and this shall 
be the day of your deliverance. "f The hall rang with accla- 
mations ; but terror was not dispelled. The king, informed 
by his partisans of everything that passed, had hastened his 
march; he was at Colnbrook, fifteen miles from London. 
The parliament submitted to send only five deputies, no 
longer insisting on the admission of Evelyn. Charles receiv- 
ed them well (Nov. 11), and said that in all places, even at 
the gates of the city, he would be ready to treat. ^ When his 
answer was read in the upper house (Nov. 12), Essex rose 
and inquired what he was to do, whether he was to continue 
or suspend hostilities. He was ordered to suspend them ; 
and sir Peter Killigrew departed to treat for an armistice. 
On his arrival at Brentford, seven miles' from London, he 
found hostilities renewed. Notwithstanding the negotiation, 
the king had continued to advance, and had fallen unawares 
on Holles's regiment, which was quartered at Brentford, in 
the hope of easily crushing it and so entering suddenly into 
the city. But the valor of this small corps gave time for the 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 2; Clarendon, ut sup. ] Pari. Hist, iii., 6, 

X Rushworth, ii., 5S; Pari. Hist., iii., 9. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 193 

regiments of Hampden and lord Brook, in cantonment at a 
short distance, to come up, and these, with Holies, sustained 
for several hours the attack of the whole of the royal army. 
The cannonading was heard in London, but not understood. 
The moment, however, that Essex, who was in the house of 
lords at the time, was informed of it, he mounted his horse, 
and set off with what forces he could muster, to relieve his 
men. The battle was over before he arrived ; the parlia- 
mentary troops engaged, after suffering considerable loss, had 
retired in great disorder ; the king occupied Brentford, but 
had stopped there, and did not seem disposed to advance 
further.* 

London was indignant, and its indignation was all the 
greater from being combined with redoubled fears. Nothing 
was talked of but the king's perfidy, and his cruelty, for, it 
was said, he had intended to take the city by storm during 
the night, and give up its inhabitants, their families, their 
property, to his rapacious and licentious cavaliers. f The 
warmest advocates for war bitterly complained that he should 
bring it thus even under their very walls, and expose to such 
dangers so many thousands of his peaceable subjects. The 
parliament promptly turned this feeling to advantage. It 
invited the apprentices to enlist, promising that the time of 
their service should be reckoned as part of their apprentice- 
ship ;:}: the city offered four thousand men, taken from its 
militia, and appointed Skippon to command them. " Come, 
my boys, my brave boys," he said, as he put himself at their 
head, " let us pray heartily and fight heartily. I will run the 
same fortunes and hazards with you. Remember the cause 
is for God, and for the defence of yourselves, your wives and 
children. Come, my honest and brave boys, pray heartily 
and fight heartily, and God will bless us."§ During one 
whole day and night, these levies of militia and volunteers 
were successively filing out of London to join the army ; and 
two days after the battle of Brentford (Nov. 14), Essex, ac- 
companied by most of the members of both houses, and a crowd 
of spectators, reviewed twenty-four thousand men, disposed 
in battle array on Turnham-green, less than a mile from the 
king's outposts. 

* May, iii., 32. t Whitelocke, p. 64. 

X Rushworth, ii., 3, 53. § Whitelocke, 65 ; Pari. Hist, iii., 14. 

17 



194 HISTOKY OF THE 



Here the discussion, which had commenced in the general's 
council after the battle of Edgehill, was renewed. Hampden 
and his friends eagerly demanded that an attack should at 
once be made. Never again, they said, would they find 
the people at once so determined, so imperiously necessitated 
to conquer. For a moment their advice prevailed, and some 
movements of the troops were ordered in consequence. But 
Essex gave way most reluctantly, the old officers persevering 
in their opposition. An incident happened to strengthen that 
opposition. One day, when the army was drawn up in battle 
array in front of that of the king, whether in consequence of 
the royal troops appearing to make a demonstration of attack, 
or from some other cause, two or three hundred spectators, 
who had come from London on horseback, suddenly started 
off" at full gallop towards town : at the mere sight of this, 
the courage of the parliamentary army seemed altogether 
shaken — desponding expressions circulated, and many soldiers 
appeared disposed to quit their colors and also return home. 
When the misconception was cleared up, however, faces re- 
gained their serenity, and the ranks closed up firmly ; abun- 
dance of provisions, wine, tobacco, and so on, sent by the 
women of the city to their sons and husbands, brought back 
confidence and gaiety to the camp. But Essex decidedly 
refused to hazard all on the strength of the public enthusiasm ; 
he recalled the regiments which had advanced, and took up 
on all sides a defensive position ; and the king, who on his 
part dreaded an attack, having no more ammunition, effected 
his retreat without obstacle, first to Reading, and then to Ox- 
ford, where he took up his winter quarters.* 

So much hesitation and delay, against which the leaders of 
parliament struggled in vain, had more powerful causes than 
the wavering attitude of the soldiers, or the prudence of the 
general. Even the city was full of doubts and divisions ; the 
peace-party loudly asserted its principles there, fortified as it 
now was by the accession, especially among the higher class 
of citizens, of many who had consented to war with fear and 
sorrow, many only because they did not know how to prevent 
it. Already petitions, while denouncing as vehemently as ever 
popery and absolute power, called upon parliament to restore 
peace (Dec. 19). f These petitions were suppressed, their 

* Wh/telocke, nt sup. ; Ludlow, Mem., 26. f Pari. Hist., iii., 43 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 195 

authors menaced, but others were sent from the country, and 
addressed to the lords, who were thought better disposed to 
receive them (Dec. 22).* Opposite petitions were not want- 
ing : on the one hand, the magistrates and common council 
of the city, renewed by recent elections, on the other, the 
lower classes of citizens and the populace, were devoted to the 
boldest leaders of the commons, and ardently embraced every 
opportunity to excite or uphold them. A tradesman named 
Shute, came almost every day (Nov. 13 and 21, Dec. 9, &c.)f 
to the bar of the house of commons, followed by a numerous 
train, and demanding, in the name of " the pious and move- 
ment pai'ty," that war should be carried on with vigor. 
He was received with cordiality, and thanked for his zeal ; 
but when his language became too imperious, and he spoke 
too insolently of the lords and officers of the army, the house 
felt obliged to reprimand him (Dec. 11),:}: for no one dared to 
say or even think that the commons could separate from the 
lords on their side, or triumph without their support. To 
give the friends of peace some show of satisfaction, it was 
arranged that the common council should officially petition 
for peace, not from the parliament, but from the king him- 
self; the embarrassment of answering such an appeal would 
thus fall upon Charles, and they were sure the answer given 
by him would displease the citizens. § Accordingly, with the 
consent of the houses, a deputation from the common council 
proceeded to Oxford (Jan. 2, 1643). The king smiled when 
they urged him to return to London, promising to suppress all 
riots : " You cannot maintain peace there by yourselves," said 
he ; and sent back the deputies with his answer, accompanied 
by a gentleman whom he charged to read it in his name to 
the assembled citizens. An immense multitude collected at 
Guildhall to hear it (Jan. 13) ; lord Manchester and Pym 
were present, ready to repel, in the name of parliament, the 
charges which might be made by the king. At the sight of 
this noisy multitude, the king's commissioner was frightened, 
and wished to be excused from reading the letter himself, 
alleging the weakness of his voice. Imperatively summoned 
to discharge his duty, he obeyed, and was even forced to read 
the answer twice, in two different halls, that every one might 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 46. f lb., 12, &c. t lb., 3S. § lb., 38. 



196 HISTORY OF THE 



hear it. After the second reading, a few royalists, who had 
doubtingly stationed themselves near the door, hazarded some 
cheers, at once drowned by violent murmurs. The king's 
letter was long and bitter, full of recriminations, which gave 
no indication of a wish for peace, Pym and lord Manchester 
replied ; the shout, " we will live and die with them," arose 
from the multitude, and all petitions for peace were for a time 
relinquished.* The attempts of the royal party at reconci- 
liation had never any better result ; but they were constantly 
renewed, and kept Westminster, as well as the city, in a con- 
stant state of anxious suspense ; no one, as yet, thought of 
putting an effectual termination to them, by those last excesses 
of tyranny which give to parties a few days of unlimited 
power, soon punished by long continued reverses. The par- 
liament, intent upon struggling against this inward evil, could 
not outwardly display its full energy, nor direct it freely to 
other conflicts. 

In the counties it was otherwise ; there nothing stood in 
the way of parties, no general and decisive responsibility was 
attached to their acts ; and political necessities and calcula- 
tions neither regulated nor intimidated their passions. Thus, 
while in the neighborhood of London the war between the 
parliament and the king seemed to languish, elsewhere, be- 
tween the parliamentarians and royalists, it broke forth spon- 
taneous and energetic, openly carried on in each locality by 
the inhabitants on their own account, and almost without 
attention to what was passing between Oxford and the me- 
tropolis. Scarce six months had elapsed, before the country 
was covered with warlike confederations, freely entered into, 
either in the interior of particular counties by men holding 
the same opinions, or between neighboring counties, to sup- 
port their common cause. As a preliminary step, these 
confederations requested and received from the king or the 
parliament, according to their views, commissions for their 
leaders, and power to levy soldiers, impose taxes, and adopt 
all such measures as they considered necessary to insure suc- 
cess. After this, they acted separately, and almost at their 
own discretion, except the occasionally sending an account to 
Oxford or London of their situation, their proceedings, and 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 110 ; Pari. Hist, iii., 49. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 197 

soliciting, on occasion, assistance or advice.* In default of 
these local leagues, in many cases concurrently with them, 
some rich and influential individual levied a small body of 
men and carried on partisan warfare, sometimes in his 
own immediate neighborhood, sometimes at a greater dis- 
tance, according to his courage, his strength, or the necessity 
of the case.")" In other places, if more pacific feelings pre- 
vailed for awhile, they were manifested with the same inde- 
pendence ; in Yorkshire and Cheshire, the two parties con- 
sidering themselves nearly equal, and more likely merely to 
damage each other than for either to obtain the victory, con- 
cluded a regular treaty of neutrality ;:j: and nearly at the 
same time, at the opposite extremity of England, the counties 
of Devon and Cornwall solemnly promised each other, by 
commissioners, to remain at peace, and to let the king and the 
parliament fight the matter out as they might (Feb., 1643). § 
But both the parliament and the king strongly censured these 
conventions, 1 1 and even those who had entered into them had 
presumed too much on their mutual forbearance. They were 
ere long as fiercely engaged in hostilities as the rest of their 
countrymen. In the eastern, midland, and south-eastern 
counties, the most populous and wealthy, the parliamentary 
party was strongest ; in those of the north, the west, and 
south-west, the preponderance belonged to the king ; in the 
latter, landed property was less divided, industry less active, 
the higher nobility more influential, and the roman-catholic 
religion had more adherents. But in both these portions of 
the kingdom, particularly in that where the king's interest 
prevailed, the weakest party was still strong enough to keep 
its enemies in check ; and the parliament had this advantage, 
that the counties devoted to its cause, nearly all contiguous 

* The two principal confederacies were, in the north, the counties 
of Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, for the 
royal cause ; and in the east, the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cam- 
bridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Essex, Lincoln, and Hertford for the 
parliament. There were several others, as in the centre, that of the 
counties of Northampton, Warwick, Leicester, Derby, and Stafford for 
the parliament : in the south-east, that of the counties of Dorset, So- 
merset, Devon, and Cornwall, for the king, &c. ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 
66, &c. 

t See Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs, and those of Ludlow. 

t Clarendon, ii., 206. § lb., 203. || lb., 240. 

17* 



198 HISTORY OF THE 



and compact, formed round London a formidable girdle of 
defence ; while the royalist counties, spreading from the south- 
west to the north-east, from the Land's-end to the extremity 
of Durham, in a long and narrow line, broken at intervals by 
districts holding opposite views, were much less united among 
themselves, had a difficulty in maintaining correspondence, 
could rarely act in concert, and only protected the rear of 
Charles's head-quarters at Oxford, a place entirely royalist, 
but too far advanced in, almost isolated amidst, the enemy's 
territory. 

A war of this kind, in the heart of winter, and in which the 
two principal armies remained nearly inactive, could not 
bring about prompt or decisive results. Everywhere and 
every day, there were sudden and brief expeditions, small 
places by turns taken and lost, surprises, skirmishes, wherein 
the two parties were alternately winners and losers to about 
the same extent.* The citizens were becoming disciplined 
and experienced, though they were not as yet regular soldiers. 
Some leaders began to distinguish themselves by their courage, 
their talents, or their good fortune, but none were known to 
the whole nation ; their influence was as local as their ex- 
ploits. Besides, notwithstanding the ardor of men's passions, 
the conduct of the parties to each other was upon the whole 
gentlemanly and forbearing ; though the aristocracy was no 
longer in the ascendant, and the new power of the commons 
was the true cause of the national movement, it was against 
the king and his tyranny that the country had risen ; the dif- 
ferent classes of society were not at war, nor wished to crush 
each other, either in self-defence or in the assertion of liberty. 
On both sides, and in most places, command was in the hands 
of men of nearly equal condition, formed to the same habits, 
and capable of understanding and respecting each other, even 
while they fought. Licentious, thoughtless, and rapacious, 
still the cavaliers were not ferocious ; and the presbyterians 
retained, amidst their harsh fanaticism, a respect for the laws, 
and for humanity, of which the history of civil discord pre- 
sents few examples. Relations, neighbors, friends, engaged 
under diiFerent standards, did not entirely break off all con- 
nexion, and lent each other assistance in case of need ; though 

* See Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs, and those of Ludlow, and May's 
Hist. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 199 

they met opposed in arms, they observed mutual courtesy, as 
men who had recently lived together in peace, and who were 
not separated for ever.* Prisoners were usually dismissed, 
upon the simple promise not to serve again : if it happened 
that they were suffered to depart without their necessities 
having been properly cared for, even if the king had seen 
them file oif before him with an air of cold indifference, it was 
regarded as a serious offence ;f and the cruel brutality of 
prince Rupert caused so much surprise and created so much 
indignation, that even the multitude spoke of him with aver- 
sion and disgust, as of a rude, uncivilized foreigner. Thus 
the war, though everywhere in full operation, remained free 
from that furious rage which hastens it to a close ; both par- 
ties, openly and earnestly engaged in it, seemed afraid of 
striking each other too hard ; and there was fighting every 
day in every part of the kingdom, without the course of events 
becoming more rapid, the parliament or the king ceasing to 
lose their time in trivial debates and vain conferences. 

Towards the middle of February, however, the queen's re- 
turn gave an impulse to affairs. During the year and up- 
wards she had been in Holland, she had evinced, in the nego- 
tiations of aid, very uncommon address and activity. The 
aristocratic party was then uppermost in the States ; the 
stadtholder, her son-in-law, seconded her with all his power. 
Confident and adventurous when no pressing danger disturbed 
her mind, eminently gracious and insinuating in her manner 
towards those of whom she stood in need, she found means to 
interest in her cause this reserved and republican people. In 
vain did the parliament send over (September) to the Hague, 
Mr. Walter Strickland, as ambassador, to remind the States 
of the services which the English people had formerly ren- 
dered to the liberties of the United Provinces, and to require, 
at least, a strict neutrality. Strickland, after waiting a long 
time for an audience, obtained, with great difficulty, some 
equivocal declaration ; the people openly manifested their ill 
will towards him, and the queen continued, without interrup- 
tion, the preparations for her departure.:!: Four vessels laden 
with arms, amnmnition, officers, and soldiers, accompanied 

* Hutchinson's Memoirs ; Ludlow's Memoirs. 

t Lilly, Observ. on the Life of King Charles. Whitelocke, 66. 

i Rushworth, ii., 3, 157 ; Harris' Life of Cromwell, 250. 



200 aiStOEY OF THE 



her, and admiral Batten, whom parliament had ordered to 
intercept the convoy, did not overtake them till they were dis- 
embarking at Burlington (Feb. 22, 1643). Batten cannonad- 
ed the place ; the queen was lodged on the quay ; the balls 
fell upon her house, and even into the room where she was 
sleeping ; she hastily got up, and fled into the country, 
where she passed some hours hid, it is said, under a bank.* 
Soon the whole country was full of reports about her courage 
and her perils. Lord Newcastle came with a body of troops 
to escort her to York ; the gentry surrounded her with trans- 
port, full of indignation against the traitor Batten, who had, 
they insisted, designedly pointed his cannon at the house in 
which she lodged ; a host of catholics hastened to serve under 
her banner. In vain was this infraction of the laws of the 
kingdom warmly denounced to the king and to the parliament ; 
in vain, with the hope of degrading or intimidating lord New- 
castle, the name the army of the papists and of the queen'\ was 
given to his army. Having long since received formal author- 
ity from the king,:j: he contemptuously spurned all these com- 
plaints, and retained his new soldiers. He soon found him- 
self at the head of a considerable force. The queen conti- 
nued to reside at York, less anxious to rejoin her husband, than 
delighted to command alone, and to preside without restraint 
over all the projects with which her court was already in full 
agitation. Hamilton and Montrose came from Scotland to 
consult with her on the means of engaging that kingdom in 
the king's cause ; Hamilton, always conciliatory and cautious, 
maintained that it was possible, notwithstanding the decidedly 
hostile influence of the marquis of Argyle, to gain over the 
Scottish parliament. Montrose, presumptuous and daring, 
urged that under the command of the earl of Antrim, a power- 
ful nobleman of the north of Ireland, who had also come to 
York to offer his services, a body of Irish should land on the 
coast of Scotland, and, joining the highlanders who were to be 
raised, massacre the presbyterian chiefs ; and he offered him- 
self to carry out as well as arrange the project. § The queen 
lent an ear to every suggestion, secretly favoring the most 
violent, but careful to propitiate all who came to render 

* Clarendon, ii., 213 ; Memoirs de Mad. de Monteville, i., 273. 
t Clarendon, ut sup. • % See Appendix, vii. 

§ Rush worth, ii., 3, 353 ; Baillie's Letters, i., 304. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 201 

homage to her power. She at the same time, and with great 
success, entered into secret negotiations with some of the par. 
liamentary leaders, already disgusted with their party, or in- 
fluenced by her proximity ; sir Hugh Cholmondley, governor 
of Scarborough, who a month before had defeated a body of 
royalists, promised (end of March) to deliver that town into her 
hands ; even sir John Hotham did not seem indisposed to open 
to her the gates of Hull, which before the breaking out of the 
war he had so rudely shut against the king. In short, through- 
out the north, the royalists were full of ardor and hope ; the 
parliamentarians, anxious and silent, wrote letter upon letter 
to London to demand advice or assistance. 

The parliament itself felt troubled ; at the commencement 
of the war, it had flattered itself with the expectation of speedy 
success ; the increase of taxes excited murmurs ;* there were 
rumors of conspiracies in the city ; notwithstanding the ab- 
sence of many members friendly to peace, every time peace 
was spoken of, it found, even in the commons, numerous advo- 
cates. Negotiations were not quite broken off; it was pro- 
posed to renew them, and as a proof of good faith to disband 
the armies on both sides, as soon as a treaty should be com- 
menced. Sir Benjamin Rudyard supported the motion : " I 
have long and thoughtfully expected," said he, " that the cup 
of trembling which hath gone round about us to other nations, 
would at length come in amongst us ; it is now come at last, 
and we may drink the dregs of it, the worst ; which God 
avert ! There is yet some comfort left, that our miseries are 
not likely to last long ; for we cannot fight here as they do in 
Germany, in that great, large, vast continent, where, although 
there be war in some parts of it, yet there are many other re- 
mote quiet places for trade and tillage to support in. We 
must fight as in a cockpit, we are surrounded with the sea ; 
we have no stronger holds than our own skulls and our own 
ribs to keep out enemies ; so that the whole kingdom will sud- 
denly be but one flame. It hath been said in this house, that 
we are bound in conscience to punish the shedding of inno- 
cent blood ; but, sir, who shall be answerable for all the inno- 
cent blood which shall be spilt hereafter, if we do not endeavor 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 77 ; the new taxes imposed on the city of London 
amounted to 10,000/. a week, those on the whole kingdom to 33,518/., 
a week ; Clarendon, ii., 255. 



202 HISTOKY OF THE 



a peace by a speedy treaty ? Certainly God is as much to be 
trusted in a treaty as in Avar ; it is he that gives vs'isdom to 
treat as well as courage to fight, and success to both, as it 
pleaseth him. Blood is a crying sin, it pollutes a land. Why 
should we defile this land any longer ?"* The motion was 
rejected (Feb. !'!),'[ but only by a majority of three, and the 
words of Rudyard were in the mouths of many well-disposed 
persons. The leaders of the commons secretly shuddered at 
seeing themselves driven to solicit a peace, impossible except 
on conditions which would render it fatal to them. Yet they 
gave way ; for few, even among their friends, were so pas- 
sionately ardent in the matter as not to desire to avoid such 
evils, if possible ; and on the 20th of March, after some pre- 
liminary negotiations, five commissioners:!: departed for Ox- 
ford, charged to discuss for twenty days, first, a suspension of 
arms, and then a treaty. 

They were well received by the king ; their intercourse 
with the court was dignified and imposing ; the earl of Nor- 
thumberland, president of the committee, displayed great mag- 
nificence : he had brought with him all his household, his 
plate, his wine ; provisions were regularly sent him from Lon- 
don : the royalists visited and dined with him : the king even 
deigned to accept from him a few presents for his own table. § 
Among the earl's coadjutors, plain members of the commons, 
there were several who took infinite pleasure in appearing at 
Oxford with so much parade. But when the negotiation be- 
gan, these brilliant demonstrations were without effect ; neither 
the parliament nor the king could accept each other's condi- 
tions, for they were the same as those which had been so 
haughtily rejected before the war commenced, and would have 
surrendered one or the other party without defence to its ad- 
versaries. One evening the parliamentary commissioners 
flattered themselves they had at last obtained from the king, 
probably on the subject of the militia, a concession of some 
importance ; after a long conference, he had appeared to yield, 

* Pari. Hist., iii., SO. 

t There were two divisions in the house ; in the first the motion 
was only carried by 76 to 73 ; in the second, by S6 to 83 ; Pari. Hist., 
iii., 79. 

I The earl of Northumberland, sir John Holland, sir William Ar- 
myn, William Pierpoint, and Bulstrode Whitelocke. Whitelocke, 66. 

§ lb., 68. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 203 

and was to give them a written answer the next morning. To 
their great surprise, it was quite different from what had been 
agreed upon ; and they learned that before the king went to 
bed, the gentlemen of the bed-chamber, the confidants of the 
queen, had, in the absence of his ministers, induced him to 
change his resolution.* " If, at least, the king," said Mr. 
Pier point, one of the commissioners, to the council, " would 
only treat with favor some of the lords attached to parliament, 
their influence might serve him." But Charles, rancorous and 
haughty with reference to his courtiers as well as to his people, 
would scarcely even listen to a suggestion put forward one 
day of restoring to the earl of Northumberland the oflice of 
lord high admiral ; intrigues of personal interest were as 
futile as their success would have been.j" The king, as well 
as the leaders of the commons, had no wish for peace ; he had 
promised the queen" that he would never agree to it without 
her consent ; and she wrote to him from York to dissuade him 
from it, already displeased that negotiations should have been 
opened in her absence, and declaring to her husband that she 
would leave England if she did not officially obtain a guard 
for her safety.:}: A petition from the officers in garrison at 
Oxford, secretly set on foot by the king himself,§ urgently op- 
posed the suspension of arms. In vain did some of the par- 
liamentary commissioners, in private conversations, endeavor 
to excite his fears as to the future ; in vain did other commis- 
sioners, who had come from Scotland to solicit the calling of a 
parliament in that kingdom, propose their mediation. || He 
rejected it as an affront, forbade them to meddle with the 
affairs of England, and at last made the commissioners, as his 
final answer, the offer to return to the parliament, if it would 
remove its place of meeting to some place at least twenty miles 
from London. Upon the receipt of this message, parliament 
immediately recalled its commissioners, and by so urgent an 
order that they felt themselves compelled to set off" the same 
day (April 15), though it was late and their travelling car- 
riages were not ready. If 

Their proceedings at Oxford, particularly their intercourse 
with the king and the court, had inspired the partisans of 

* Whitelocke, 68. t Clarendon, Memoirs, i., 181. 

X Ibid. § Ibid. || Clarendon, ii., 324, &c. 

% Whitelocke, 69 ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 164 ; Clarendon, ii., 335. 



204 HISTORY OF THE 



war with much distrust. Lord Northumberland, on his arri- 
val, heard that one of his letters to his wife had been opened 
by Henry Marty n, a member of the committee of safety, a 
man noted only as having fled from Reading at the mere ap- 
proach of the royal troops, and for the violence of his lan- 
guage. No nobleman was more tenacious of his dignity than 
the earl, nor more accustomed to deference on the part of 
his fellow-citizens. Meeting with Martyn at Westminster, he 
demanded an explanation of the outrage he had committed ; 
and, as Martyn in a sneering tone maintained he had done 
right, the earl struck him with his cane in the presence of se- 
veral spectators. When brought before parliament, the quar- 
rel was received by the commons with some perplexity, by the 
lords with haughty contempt, and almost immediately hushed 
up.* Matters were in that condition wherein every incident 
reveals and foments dissensions which every one would yet 
fain conceal. Spring was coming on ; whether peace was 
desired or feared, it was essential to think of war. The same 
day that the commissioners returned to London, Essex again 
took the field. f It was still Hampden's opinion that he should 
march at once upon Oxford, and besiege and reduce the king.:}: 
At Oxford itself, alarm prevailed, and they talked of going to 
join the queen and lord Newcastle in the north. But Essex, 
either still distrusting his strength, or already uneasy at his 
success, again rejected this daring counsel, and still encamped 
between Oxford and London, contented himself with laying 
siege to Reading, a place he deemed indispensable to the safety 
of parliament. 

Reading submitted in ten days (April 27) ; Hampden then 
once more proposed the siege of Oxford : Essex persisted in 
his refusal. § Nothing was further from him than treachery 
or fear ; but he made war with regret, and, to counteract his 
melancholy anticipations, he had no longer the pleasures of 
popularity. Even before the recommencement of the cam- 
paign, some anger had been expressed against him in the 
commons, particularly in the committee of safety, the very 
focus of the party. The more violent had gone so far as to 
ask whether, then, it was impossible to supersede him, and the 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 109 ; Clarendon, ii., 336, 364. 

t April 15, according to Rushworth ; April 17, according to May. 

j Clarendon, ii., 355. § Clarendon, ut sup. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 205 

name of Hampden, it is said, had been mentioned.* Hamp- 
den was too wise to entertain even the idea of a power for 
which he felt no desire ; whether capable or not of command- 
ing, he only served under Essex as a colonel. But since the 
beginning of the war, during the winter more especially, others 
had acquired a more independent and extended glory. In the 
north, Fairfax and his father, notwithstanding the superiority 
of lord Newcastle, daily and in every direction disputed with 
him, in the most daring manner, the dominion of that part of 
the country. "j" At the head of the confederation of the eastern 
counties,:j: lord Manchester, it is true, had no opportunity of 
encountering any royalist leader of eminence, but he had often 
given valuable assistance to the parliamentarians of the north- 
ern and midland counties ; well-organized bodies of militia 
were ready to follow him ; and his frankness, his liberality, 
and his gentleness endeared him to the population there. In 
the same counties, colonel Cromwell, already famous for vari- 
ous dashing exploits, as skilfully planned as ably executed, 
exercised over the minds of many men of bold spirit, enthusi- 
astic piety, and of a condition at once wealthy and obscure, an 
influence which already gave proof of great genius and great 
power. Finally, in the south and west, the dispersion of seve- 
ral bands of royalists and the taking of seven places in three 
months,§ had gained sir William Waller the appellation of 
"William the Conqueror. "|| The parliament then, it was 
said, was at no loss for either generals or armies, and if lord 
Essex refused to conquer, he must make way for some one 
else. 

No specific proposition, no public suggestion even, followed 
these bitter speeches. Essex was not merely, an officer in the 
service of a discontented party ; to him were attached the lords 
who were engaged in the war, the moderate men who wished 
for peace, and the clearer-sighted presbyterians, already un- 
easy at the proceedings of the more daring sectaries. Hamp- 

* Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, article " Hampden." 

t Fairfax, Mem. (1699), 13, et seq. 

X Lord Kimbolton, known also under the name of lord Mandeville, 
and who had borne the title of lord Manchester since the death of his 
father, which took place on the 9th of November, 1642. 

§ Chichester, Winchester, Malmsbury, Hereford, Tewksbury, Chep- 
stow, and Monmouth. 

II Clarendon, ii., 417. 
18 



206 HISTOEY OF THE 



den himself, and the kaders of the political party, though they 
urged the earl to act with greater vigor, had no design of 
separating from him. Discord then did not openly break out, 
but, concealed, it was already in active operation, and Essex 
very soon felt its effects. Those who were fain to show him 
outward respect, secretly did all in their power to impede him ; 
and his defenders, thinking they did quite enough in speaking 
for him, took very little pains to give him practical assistance. 
Before the end of a month he had to complain of the bad con- 
dition of his army ; pay, provisions, clothing, all were want- 
ing ; suffering and sickness decimated his men, lately so care- 
fully provided for by the city. He made his wants known to 
the different committees whose business it was to supply them ; 
but his adversaries, more active and indefatigable than his 
friends, had far greater influence in these quarters ; it was, 
in fact, to his enemies, in consequence of their unceasing ac- 
tivity, that most of the executive measures had been entrusted ; 
the subordinate agents were almost all of their selection. All 
the general's appeals were without effect.* Though the second 
campaign had opened, no decided change was perceptible ; 
and already the party which had divested the king of power 
felt that power slipping from its grasp ; already another party, 
though as yet obliged to remain silent, were strong enough to 
reduce the great army of the parliament to inefficiency, and 
earnest enough in its purpose to risk everything by giving the 
present advantage to the common enemy. 

Already, too, and under the influence of the same feelings, 
another army was silently forming. In those skirmishes 
which, notwithstanding the negotiations and delays between 
Oxford and London, were every day taking place, the parlia- 
mentarians, since the Brentford affair, had experienced fre- 
quent defeats. The royal cavalry, more especially, struck 
terror into the parliamentary horse, and the cavalry was still, 
as in the feudal times, the most honored and efficient force. 
Hampden and Cromwell were talking one day of this inferi- 
ority of their party : " How can it be otherwise ? " asked 
Cromwell ; " your horse are for the most part superannuated 
domestics, tapsters, and people of that sort ; theirs are the sons 
of gentlemen, men of quality. Do you think such poor vaga- 



May, ill., 101 ; Holies, Mem. 9. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 5^07 

bonds as your fellows, have soul enough to stand against gen- 
tlemen full of resolution and honor ? Take not my words ill : 
I know you will not ; you must have fellows animated by a 
spirit that will take them as far as the king's gentlemen, or 
you'll always be beaten." " You are right," said Hampden, 
" but this cannot be." " I can do something towards it," said 
Cromwell, " and I will : I will raise men who will have the 
fear of God before their eyes, and who will bring some con- 
science to what they do ; and I promise you they shall not be 
beaten."* He accordingly went through the eastern counties, 
recruiting young men, the greater part known to him, and he 
to them ; all freeholders or the sons of freeholders, to whom 
pay was not an object, nor mere idleness a pleasure ; all fierce, 
hardy fanatics, engaging in the war for conscience sake, and 
under Cromwell from confidence in him. " I will not deceive 
you," said he, " nor make you believe, as my commission has 
it, that you are going to fight for the king and parliament : if 
the king were before me I would as soon shoot him as another ; 
if your conscience will not allow you to do as much, go and 
serve elsewhere. "f The majority did not hesitate a moment, 
and they were no sooner enlisted, than all the comforts of do- 
mestic, and all the license of military life, were alike inter- 
dicted them ; subjected to the most severe discipline, com- 
pelled to keep their horses and arms in perfect order, often 
sleeping in the open air, passing almost without relaxation from 
the duties of military service to exercises of piety, their leader 
insisted upon their devoting themselves to their new calling as 
earnestly as to their cause, and that the free energy of fanati- 
cism should in them be combined with the disciplined firmness 
of the soldier.:}: When the campaign opened, fourteen squad- 
rons of such volunteers, forming a body of about a thousand 
horse, marched under the orders of Cromwell. § 

A month passed almost without any incident. The taking 
of Reading, so little thought of in London, had excited the 

* This conversation is related in a pamphlet of the time, entitled 
" Monarchy asserted to be the best form of government, in a conference 
at Whitehall between Oliver and a committee of parliament." Lon- 
don, 1660, 8vo. 

t Mem. of the Protectoral House, &c., by Mark Noble (17S7), i.,271. 

j Whitelocke, p. 68 ; Mercurius Pragmaticus, of the 30th of May, 
1648 ; Bates, " Elenchus motuum nuperorum," part 2, p. 220. 

§ May, ii., SO. 



208 HISTORY OF THE 



greatest alarm at Oxford, and the king, instead of acting, was 
deliberating whether he should not take to flight. The par- 
liament, embarrassed with its internal dissensions, was more 
occupied with these than about its enemies. Now, it sought 
to satisfy at once all its adherents, violent and moderate, poli- 
ticians and devotees ; now, decisive resolutions, obtained with 
great difficulty by one party, remained without effect, and as 
if abandoned by common consent. The presbyterians had 
long demanded, and had been promised an assembly of divines 
to reform, at length, the church : it was convoked ;* but par- 
liament itself named one hundred and twenty-one^ of the mem- 
bers ; associated with them thirty laymen, ten lords, and 
twenty members of the commons, with the honors of prece- 
dence ; ecclesiastics of all sorts of opinions were summoned ; 
and, without authority or independence, the assembly had 
merely to give its advice on the questions which the houses of 
parliament, or one of them, thought fit to propose. f A charge 
of high treason was brought against the queen, and no one 
raised his voice against it ; but after Pym had carried it to the 
upper house (May 23), it was no more heard of.ij: The ab- 
sence of the great seal daily impeded the administration of 
justice and other public and private business. To put an end 
to this inconvenience, and moreover, to assume to themselves 
the legal attributes of sovereignty, the commons ordered a new 
great seal to be prepared (middle of May) ; but the lords re- 
fused their assent to this proceeding, more afraid of usurping 
the emblems of sovereign power than of exercising it without 
this sanction ; and many of the commons thought it prudent 
to add their entreaties. § Sometimes the various parties, voting 
together with different views, combined in a deceptive and 
barren unanimity ; more frequently, of nearly equal strength, 
they reduced each other to incapacity, and seemed to wait till 
some external circumstance should force them to unite or 
separate for ever. 

On the 31st of May, a fast day, in the church of St. Mar- 
garet's, Westminster, both houses were listening to a sermon : 
a note was delivered to Pym, who rose immediately, and afler 

* By a resolution of parliament of the 12th of June, 1643 ; they be- 
gan to sit on the 1st of July following. 

t Neal, iii., 43. f Rushworth, ii., 3, 321. 

§ Pari. Hist, iii., 115 ; May, iii. 



ENGLISH REVOLITTION. 209 

a very animated but whispered conversation with those around 
him, waiting not for the end of the service, hastily went out 
with his principal colleagues, leaving the congregation in a 
state of excitement commensurate with their ignorance and 
their curiosity.* 

The sermon over, the houses met, and the public learned 
that a wide-spread conspiracy had just been discovered ; 
several lords, it was said, several members of the commons, 
and a great number of citizens were concerned in it. They 
had designed to arm the royalists, to seize upon the Tower, 
the arsenals, and the principal military posts, to arrest the 
leaders of both houses, and finally, to introduce the king's 
troops into London. That very day. May 31st, had been 
named for the execution of the plot. The whole matter, 
however, it was added, would soon be cleared up, for a com- 
mittee of inquiry had been appointed, and already several 
persons were mentioned as having been arrested by their 
command, f 

And, in point of fact, in the course of that night and the 
next day, Edmund Waller, a member of the commons, and a 
poet of celebrity, Mr. Tomkins, his brother-in-law, formerly 
attached to the queen's household, Mr. Challoner, a rich citi- 
zen, and several others, were arrested and examined. All of 
them acknowledged, with more or less of detail, the existence 
of a plot, the extent and purport of which, however, were 
very differently appi'ehended by the various conspirators. 
Some had only contemplated the refusing to pay taxes, in order 
to necessitate peace ; others wanted to present to both houses, 
simultaneously and in great numbers, pacific petitions ; others 
had only been present at some meetings, or assisted in draw- 
ing up certain lists wherein were set forth the names of all 
the ascertained citizens, distributing them into three classes, 
the " well-meaning, the moderate, and the enemies." But 
amidst these various notions and motives, the plot, long since 
formed, had daily gained ground. It was now called to mind, 
that more than three months before, in one of those negotia- 
tions so often resumed and broken off. Waller had been one 
of the commissioners sent to Oxford, and that on the day of 
their presentation, he being the last introduced, the king had 

♦ Clarendon, ii., 378. t lb. ; State Trials, iv., 627. 

18* 



2l0 - HISTORY OF THE 



received him with particular condescension, saying : " Mr. 
Waller, though the last, you are not the worst, nor the least 
in my favor."* From that time a constant correspondence 
had been kept up with Oxford, in which certain royalist mer- 
chants, who had quitted London, to escape the persecution of 
the commons, were the principal agents ;f one of these, named 
Hall, lived secretly at Beaconsfield, entrusted with the trans- 
mission of messages ; lady Aubigny, to whom the parliament 
had given permission to go to Oxford for her private affairs, 
had brought back in a little box, a commission from the king, 
authorizing some of the conspirators to levy men and money 
in his name ; finally, some days back, a message had been 
conveyed to Hall, " that the great vessel was come into port," 
meaning that everything was ready ; and he had forwarded 
this information to lord Falkland, who had answered : " Let 
them make haste, then, for the war every day becomes more 
difficult to put a stop to."^ 

Here was much more than party-justice needs in the way 
of proofs ; and parliament might, if it had chosen, have be- 
lieved more. Seized with a basely passionate desire to save 
his own life, Waller determined to do so at whatever price. 
He put everything in motion ; money, confessions, accusations, 
addressing the most obscure, as well as the most powerful 
protectors, supplicating all the fanatics of any influence to 
come and hear the humble profession of his repentance ; as 
ready to exaggerate the extent of the plot, as he had perhaps 
been to exaggerate at Oxford, the number and influence of the 
conspirators. Lord Portland and lord Conway had received 
some secret instructions from him ; he denounced them ; the 
earl of Northumberland and many others were compromised 
by his answers. § Though few among the parties implicated 
had done anything criminal in point of law, many had known 
and approved of what was going on. But parliament, with 
courageous wisdom, would not take advantage either of the 
imprudence of its enemies or the baseness of its accomplice, 
deeming that justice would suffice for its safety. Only seven 
persons were brought before a court martial ; and of five 
who were condemned, but two, Challoner and Tomkins, 

* Whitelocke, 67. f Sir Nicholas Crisp, sir George Benyon, &c. 

t State Trials, iv., 626 ; Clarendon, ii., 376. 
§ May, iii., 45; Clarendon, ii., 379. 



ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. 211 



underwent their sentence. They died like brave men (July 5), 
but without thinking themselves or affecting to be martyrs ; 
even manifesting, with touching sincerity, some doubt as to 
the goodness of their cause ; " I prayed God," said Challoner, 
as he ascended the scaffold, " that if this design might not be 
honorable to him, it might be known. God heard me." 
Tomkins said, " I am glad the plot has been discovered, for it 
might have occasioned very ill consequences."* As for 
Waller, who had likewise been condemned, his life was 
granted as the recompense of his confessions, by the influence 
of some of his relations, among others, of his cousin Crom- 
well ; perhaps, too, through that lingering respect which is 
still paid to genius, even when it only serves to render base- 
ness more conspicuous. "(■ 

For some days, the leaders of the commons flattered them- 
selves that the discovery and punishment of this conspiracy 
would throw consternation into Oxford, intimidate the royalists 
in London, suspend the dissensions of the parliament, relieve, 
in a word, their party from the embarrassments in which its 
energy was fruitlessly wasting itself. But these hopes were 
soon dissipated ; scarcely had the thanksgivings ceased to re- 
echo through the metropolitan churches, scarcely had it taken 
the new oath of union, decreed in the moment of peril, before 
parliament found itself a sufferer from greater reverses with- 
out, and more violent disputes within. 

The king had heard, without much concern, of the failure 
of the city plot, for nearly at the same time, he received in- 
telligence that in the south, west, and north, his generals had 
obtained distinguished success ; and he preferred a triumph 
obtained by the cavaliers and war, to one achieved by under- 
hand dealings with citizens who had so lately opposed his 
counsels. On the 19th of June, an unexpected event seemed 
to recal his thoughts to London and the parliament. A report 
spread that the day before, some leagues from Oxford, on 
Chalgrave Common, in a skirmish of cavalry wherein prince 
Rupert had surprised and beaten the parliamentarians, Hamp- 
den had been wounded : " I saw him," said a prisoner, " quit 
the field before the action was finished, contrary to his custom ; 
his head was hanging down, his hands leaning on his horse's 

* State Trials, iv., 632. t Ibid., 635 ; May, ut sup. 



212 HISTORY OF THE 



neck ; he is certainly wounded." The news caused a great 
sensation in Oxford, though rather of curiosity than of joy ; 
they could scarcely believe that such a inan should be on the 
point of falling under so unexpected a blow ; they hesitated to 
rejoice. The king himself, on hearing the news, only thought 
of embracing so good an opportunity of conciliating, if possi- 
ble, this powerful adversary, who had done him so much 
harm, but who was thought capable of repairing everything. 
Doctor Giles, a country neighbor of Hampden's, and who had 
kept up a familiar correspondence with him, was then at Ox- 
ford ; the king told him to send to Hampden, as if from him- 
self, to see how he was, for that if he had no surgeon he would 
send him one of his own. The doctor hesitated ; " for," said 
he, " I have seemed unlucky to him in several conjunctures 
of time, when I made addresses to him in my own behalf. 
Once when my goods were stopped and robbed, and I addressed 
him for relief, my messenger came in his house that very in- 
stant in which the news of his eldest son's death came to him ; 
and some good time after, falling into a like calamity, I sent 
to him again ; but my messenger met- there with another that 
brought him the news of his beloved daughter, Mrs. Knight- 
ley's death ; so I seemed to screech-owl him."* The doctor, 
however, undertook the king's mission. But when his mes- 
senger arrived on the 24th of June, he found Hampden almost 
lifeless ; he had had his shoulder fractured by two balls, and 
for six days had suffered the most exquisite tortures. He 
was, however, told who it was had sent to inquire for him, 
and with what intention. A powerful agitation was seen to 
pervade -his whole frame, he appeared about to speak, but 
could not, and died a few moments after. As soon as his 
death was clearly ascertained, Charles was infinitely more 
gratified than he would have been at finding his antagonist 
alive, and inclined to negotiate ; and Hampden was no longer 
mentioned at the court at Oxford, except to recal his offences, 
or to remark triumphantly that he had been killed in the same 
county, near the very place, where he had been the first to 
put in execution the order of parliament concerning the militia, 
and to levy men against the king.f 

In London, on the contrary, and throughout almost the whole 

• Warwick's Memoirs (1702), 241. t Clarendon, ii., 396 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 213 

country, there was manifested profound grief. Never had a 
man inspired a whole nation with so much confidence ; who- 
ever belonged to the national party, no matter in what rank or 
from what motives, looked to Hampden for the success of his 
views ; the more moderate had faith in his wisdom ; the more 
violent, in his devoted patriotism ; the more honest, in his up- 
rightness ; the more intriguing, in his talents. Prudent and 
reserved, while ever ready to brave danger, he had been the 
cause of no failure, still possessed the affections of all, and, by 
his unexpected loss, gave a shock to the hopes of all. Happy 
and but too rare fortune, which thus fixed his name for ever 
on that height, whither the love and full confidence of his con- 
temporaries had carried it, and perhaps saved his virtue, like 
his glory, from the rocks on which revolutions drive and wreck 
the noblest of their favorites ! 

His death seemed a signal for the disasters which now for 
more than two months, successively and without interruption, 
assailed the parliament, aggravating from day to day the evil 
as yet hidden, of which they were the result. The enemies 
of Essex, in leaving his army deficient of everything, had re- 
lied, but mistakenly, on the success of his rivals. While the 
general-in-chief and the council of war who accompanied him 
were sending messenger after messenger to demand money, 
clothes, ammunition and arms,* the news came that at Ather- 
ton-moor, in the north, Fairfax had been defeated (June S0),'\ 
that sir John Hotham was on the point of surrendering Hull to 
the queen, that lord Willoughby could no longer defend Lin- 
colnshire against lord Newcastle ; and that thus the confedera- 
tion of the eastern counties, that bulwark of parliament, was 
about to be thrown open to the enemy. It was still worse in 
the south-west ; in one week sir William Waller had lost two 
battles ;:{: the peasants of Cornwall, those descendants of the 
ancient Britons, were dispersing, in every encounter, the par- 
liamentary recruits ; they had been seen at Lansdown, after 
having modestly begged permission to run in upon and take a 
battery previously considered altogether inaccessible ; and a 
fortnight after, under the walls of Bristol, they mounted to the 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 144. f Fairfax, Mem., 36. 

t That of Lansdown, Somersetshire, July 5, and that of Ruundway- 
down, Wiltshire, July 13. 



214 HISTORY OF THE 



attack with the same intrepidity.* In Cornwall, landed pro- 
perty had not, as elsewhere, constantly changed hands ; the 
same families of gentry had lived there for centuries, sur- 
rounded by the same families of farmers and laborers ; and 
the people, of a pious and artless disposition, strangers to the 
new ideas and views, obedient without fear or servility to the 
influence of the nobility, felt for their superiors and their old 
customs the same enthusiasm that the most zealous parlia- 
mentarians had for their opinions and their rights. f Besides, 
there and in the adjacent counties were some of the king's 
most judicious friends — the marquis of Hertford, brother-in-law 
to Essex, who had for a long time lived retired on his estate, 
disgusted with the court ; sir Bevil Greenville, the most popu- 

* Clarendon, ii., 437, &c. 

t Sir Edw. Walker's Discourses, 50. The services of the men of 
Cornwall were highly estimated by Charles. In the church of Stratton, 
and several others in that county, are still preserved copies of a letter 
of thanks addressed by the unhappy monarch to these faithful subjects. 
It runs thus : 
« C. R. 

" To the inhabitants of the county of Cornwall. 

" We are so highly sensible of the merit of our county of Cornwall, 
of their zeal for the defence of our person, and the just rights of our 
crown, in a time when we could contribute so little to our own defence, 
or to their assistance ; in a time when not only no reward appeared, but 
great and probable dangers were threatened to obedience and loyalty ; 
of their great and eminent courage and patience in their indefatigable 
prosecution of their great work against so potent an enemy, backed 
with so strong, rich, and populous cities, and so plentifully furnished 
and supplied with men, arms, money, ammunition, and provision of all 
kinds ; and of the wonderful success with which it pleased Almighty 
God (though with the loss of some most eminent persons, who shall 
never be forgotten by us) to reward their loyalty and patience by many 
strange victories over their and our enemies, in despite of all human 
probability, and all imaginable disadvantages ; that as we cannot be for- 
getful of so great desert, so we cannot but desire to publish it to all the 
world, and perpetuate to all time the memory of their merits, and of 
our acceptance of the same ; and to that end, we do hereby render our 
royal thanks to that our county in the most public and lasting manner 
we can devise, commanding copies hereof to be printed and published, 
and one of them to be read in every church and chapel therein, and to 
be kept for ever as a record in the same ; that as long as the history of 
these times and of this nation shall continue, the memory of how much 
that county hath merited from us and our crown, may be derived with 
it to posterity. 

" Given at our camp, at Sudeley Castle, 

" the 10th of September, 1643." 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. 215 

lar of the Cornish gentlemen, all of whom were popular ; sir 
Ralph Hopton, a worthy man and excellent officer, who sought 
no favors from Oxford, severely repressed pillage, everywhere 
protected the people, and while fulfilling what he deemed the 
duty of a faithful subject, did it with all the humanity of a 
good citizen. The merit of these generals, the bravery of 
their soldiers, reflected, by contrast utter discredit upon Waller, 
and his army, and inspired them with fear ; there was no sort 
of discipline among the parliamentary troops ; they deserted in 
whole companies ; even the commissioners sent by parliament 
to excite the zeal of the people, were seized with the same ter- 
ror, and communicated it to those around them. The magis- 
trates of Dorchester were one day showing the fortifications of 
their town to Mr. Strode, and asked him what he thought of 
-them: " All that," said he, "will not stop the cavaliers one half 
hour ; 'tis mere sport with them to scale ramparts twenty feet 
high."* Dorchester surrendered at the first summons (August) ; 
Weymouth, Portland, Barnstable, Bideford, followed its exam- 
ple (end of August) ; Taunton, Bridgewater, Bath, had already 
done the same (end of July) ; Bristol, the second city in the 
kingdom, yielded to the first attack (July 25), f through the 
cowardice of its governor, Nathaniel Fiennes, one of the leaders 
of the most violent faction. Every day brought to London the 
news of some loss ; at Oxford, on the contrary, strength in- 
creased with confidence. The queen had, at length, joined the 
king, bringing with her three thousand men and some cannon.:]: 
Their first interview took place on Keynton Down, the place 
where, the year before, the two parties had for the first time 
come to blows ; and the same day (July 13), at the same hour, 
Wilmot and Hopton obtained a brilliant victory over the par- 
liamentarians,§ at Roundway-down, in Wiltshire. Charles 
and his wife entered Oxford in triumph ; while Waller, who, 
when he set out for the army, had ordered all the constables 
on his way to hold themselves in readiness to receive his pri- 
soners, returned to London without soldiers. 1| 

Essex, still immovable, and laying the blame of his inaction 
on those who reproached him for it, was present at many de- 

* Clarendon, ii., 502. 

t Rushworth, ii., 3, 284 ; State Trials, iv., 186. 

t Rushworth, ii., 3, 274. 

§ Clarendon, ii., 434 ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 285. || Clarendon, ut sup. 



216 HISTOEY OF THE 



feats, without partaking of them or preventing them. At last, 
he wrote to the upper house : " If it were thought fit to send to 
his majesty to have peace, with the settling of religion, the laws 
and liberties of the subjects, and bringing to just trial those 
chief delinquents that have brought all this mischief to both 
kingdoms : or else, if his majesty shall please to absent him- 
self, there may be a day set down to give a period to all these 
unhappy distractions by a battle, which, when and where they 
shall choose shall be indifferent, I shall be ready to perform 
that duty I owe you ; so that, if peace be not now concluded, 
the matter may be at once ended by the sword."* A few 
days before, this letter would perhaps have been well received : 
at the news of the first reverses, the lords had solemnly pro- 
tested their fidelity to the king, and prepared new proposals of 
peace (June 16) ;f the commons, on the contrary, rather irri- 
tated than cast down, had summoned the upper house to adopt, 
without further delay, their resolution on the subject of the 
great seal ; and, on their refusal, had of their own authority 
ordered one to be engraved, bearing on one side the arms of 
England and Ireland, on the other a representation of the 
house of commons sitting at AVestminster, without any symbol 
to indicate the lords (beginning of July).:]: In such a state of 
discord, the latter would probably have pi'omoted the pacific 
views of the general ; but about the same time (June 20), the 
king, fiushed with his first successes, ofinicially declared that 
the individuals assembled at Westminster no longer formed 
two veritable houses : that the withdrawal of so many mem- 
bers and the w"ant of freedom of debate, had deprived them of 
all legal existence ; that for the future he should no longer 
give them the name of parliament, and, finally, that he forbade 
all his subjects to obey that band of traitors. § This indiscri- 
minate and violent condemnation at once re-established union 
between the two houses ; on July 5th they voted in concert 
that commissioners should proceed, on their part, to request of 
their bretliren the Scots, to send an army to the succor of the 
protestants of England, in danger of falling under the yoke of 
the papists; II and when Essex's letter reached the house of 
lords, they resolved that they would address to the king neither 

* Journals, Lords, July 11 ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 290 ; Whitelocke, 70. 
+ Pari. Hist, iii., 132. J lb., 143 ; Whitelocke, 67. 

§ Rushworth, ii., 3, 331. || Paii. Hist , iii., 144. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTIOK. 217 

petition nor pacific proposals, till he should have recalled his 
proclamation declaring the tv/o houses no longer to form a free 
and legal parliament.* 

Essex did not press his views ; honest and sincere, in coun- 
selling peace he thought he had fulfilled a duty ; as for the 
rest, he respected the parliament, and his opinion having been 
once given, far from assuming to dictate to it, he held himself 
ready to obey it. For a few days entire union seemed to reign 
in London among the various parties ; all joined in loading 
lord Essex with marks of esteem ; he speedily received am- 
munition and reinforcements. I At the same time. Waller, 
notwithstanding his disasters, was thanked for his courage and 
treated with honor, as a man whose services might still be 
highly useful, j: Orders were issued for raising, in the eastern 
counties, a fresh army, to be placed under the command of 
lord Manchester, with Cromwell as lieutenant-general (July 
22). § Hotham, whom the commons, forewarned in time 
(beginning of June), had arrested at Hull (June 29), || before 
he had had an opportunity of surrendering the town to the 
king, now awaited in the Tower his punishment ; Lord Fairfax 
succeeded to his command (3 July). II The commissioners who 
were to proceed to Scotland were named, two by the lords, four 
by the commons,** and were requested to hasten their depar- 
ture. Most of the members of the assembly of divines also 
left London for their parishes, to calm the fears of the people, 
and excite them to fresh efforts. ff Every day, in one of the 
churches of the city, in the presence of a multitude of mothers, 
children, sisters, a special service was celebrated, to invoke the 
protection of God on all who devoted themselves to the defence 
of their country and of their country's laws ;:{::}: and every morn- 
ing at the roll of the drum, crowds of citizens, men and 
women, rich and poor, went forth to work at the fortifica- 
tions. §§ Never in the house and among the people had so 

* Journals, Lords, July 11. t Pari. Hist., iii., 144. 

X Clarendon, ii. 4S2. 

§ Pari. Hist., iii., 156 ; Clarendon, ut sup. This army was to be 
composed of ten thousand men. 

II Rushworth, ii., 3, 275 ; Whitelocke, 71. IT Rushworth, ii., 3, 2S0. 

** The lords Grey of Wark and Rutland, sir William Armyn, sir Harry 
Vane, Mr. Hatcher, and Mr. Darley (Rushworth, ii., 3, 466). 

ft Pari. Hist., iii., 148 ; Clarendon, ii., 486. it Neal, ii., 506. 

§§ May, ii., 91. 

19 



218 HISTORY OF THE 



much energy been displayed, with so much prudence and 
unanimity. 

But the danger still increased ; the king's successes aug- 
mented in every direction. Notwithstanding the public ex- 
citement, some men refused to compromise themselves any 
more for the parliament ; lord Grey of Wark, one of the 
commissioners appointed by the upper house to go to Scot- 
land, evaded the employment (July 17) •* the lords sent him 
to the Tower ; the earl of Rutland, who was to have accom- 
panied him, also excused himself, on the ground of ill health. f 
The commissioners from the commons were obliged to set off 
alone ;:j: and they could go no otherwise than by sea, the roads 
in the north not being safe, nor Fairfax strong enough to give 
them an escort. They were twenty days on their voyage 
(July 20 — Aug. 9).§ Meantime, the king, better advised, 
published a milder proclamation. With hope, the wish for 
peace returned. On the 4th of August, on the motion of 
the earl of Northumberland, the lords adopted proposals to 
the king, the most moderate yet put forth ; they ordered that 
both armies should be forthwith disbanded, recalled those 
members who had been expelled for joining the king, and left 
the questions of the militia and the church for future decision, 
the one by a synod, the other by parliament. The next day 
they transmitted these to the commons, declaring in a haughty 
tone, that it was time to put an end to the calamities of the 
country. II Surprised by this unexpected attack, the war party 
vainly insisted on the danger of thus losing, for the sake of a 
few months' respite, the fruit of so many efforts, so much suf- 
fering already endured. In vain they requested, at all events, 
to have the matter put off till the answer from Scotland should 
come. The other parties replied : " It was ill done to break 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 148. f lb., 150. J lb. 

§ Kushworth, ii., 3, 466. 

II In the conference which took place between the two houses (August 
5th, 1643), the speaker of the house of lords began in the following 
terms : " Gentlemen, the lords believe it too visible to the understand- 
ing of all persons that this kingdom, with all these blessings of plenty 
and abundance, the fruits of our long and happy peace, must be forth- 
with turned into that desolation and famine which accompany a civil 
war, and that those hands and hearts that should prosper this land, do 
now endanger it by their unnatural dissensions, &c." — Pari Hist., 
iii., 156. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 2l9 

off the negotiations at Oxford ; the common and meaner sort 
of people may desire the continuance of the distractions, but it 
is evident that the more substantial and rich men desire peace, 
by their refusal to supply money for the carrying on war. At 
all events, the sending reasonable propositions to the king will 
either procure a peace, or, being refused, will raise more men 
and money than all our advances without it." It was re- 
solved, by ninety-four to sixty-five, that the proposals of the 
lords should be taken into consideration.* 

A violent agitation seized upon the war party ; peace thus 
sought amidst reverses, was not a treaty but a defeat, leaving 
all public and private interests a prey to the most terrible fears, 
destroying utterly the hopes of the patriots who desired a more 
extensive reform, of the ambitious who aimed at a revolution. 
It was resolved to use every effort to oppose the project. On 
the evening of the 6th of August, although it was Sunday, the 
lord mayor, Pennington, whom the king's proclamation had 
excluded from all amnesty, assembled the common council of 
the city ; and the next day a threatening petition required the 
commons to reject the proposals of the lords, and to adopt in 
their stead a resolution of which alderman Atkins, the bearer 
of the petition, at the same time handed in a copy.f An im- 
mense multitude, called together by small pamphlets, distri- 
buted the evening before in every direction, backed this de- 
mand by their outcries. After having forced their way 
through the mob, the lords forthwith complained to the com- 
mons of its violence and insolence, declaring that they would 
adjourn to the next day, and then adjourn again, if such out- 
rages were not punished. But the commons had already 
entered upon the consideration of the proposals of peace ; after 
a long debate, eighty-one voted in their favor, and only seventy- 
nine against them. The tumult was at its height ; outside the 
people exclaimed that they would not disperse till they had an 
answer to their mind ; within, the opponents of peace violently 
demanded another division, maintaining that there had been 
some mistake, and that they would not be thus trifled with. 
The motion was complied with : the house again divided ; 
eighty-one members persisted in demanding peace ; but the 
tellers on the other side declared their own numbers to be 

* Pari., Hist, 3, 156. 

t Rushworth, ii., 3, p. 336 ; see Appendix, No. viii. 



220 HISTORY OF THE 



eighty-eight ; the speaker immediately announced this result, 
and the partisans of peace left the house in utter stupefaction 
and fear.* 

Two days after, on the 9th of August, they tried to turn 
the tables by a similar manoeuvre. A mob of two or three 
thousand women assembled early in the morning around 
Westminster Hall, wearing white ribands on their heads, 
emblem of peace, and sent in a doleful petition, in support of 
the lords. -I" Sir John Hippesley came out and told them that 
the house also desired peace, and hoped soon to procure it, 
and that, meantime, he hoped they would retire to their homes. 
The women remained ; at twelve o'clock their number had 
increased to more than five thousand ; some men in women's 
clothes were amongst them, and, at their instigation, a party 
penetrated to the doors of the house of commons, crying, 
" Peace ! Peace !" The guard, merely a corporal's party of 
militia, requested them to retire ; but this only redoubled their 
violence : " Give us up the traitors who are against peace, 
we'll tear them in pieces ! give us up that rascal Pym !" They 
were forced back to the bottom of the stairs, and a few shots 
were fired in the air to intimidate them ; " It's only powder !" 
they said, and commenced pelting the militia with stones. The 
latter then fired at them with ball, and a squadron of horse 
coming up at the time, charged upon the ci'owd, sword in 
hand ; for a moment the women stood their ground, making a 
lane for the cavalry, whom they assailed with imprecations 
and blows. They were at last fain to retreat ; and after a few 
minutes of fearful tumult, there remained of all the crowd 
only seven or eight women wounded and weeping, and two 
lying dead. One of these, well known by the people, had 
from her childhood sung the old ballads of the country in the 
streets of London. :j: 

The victory was complete, but dearly purchased, for it had 
been gained by fraud and violence ', means which disgrace 
their own success, especially when reform proceeds in the 
name of the laws and professes to restore their vigor. It was 
already a common saying, that the king had been reproached 
with nothing which parliament itself had not in its turn been 
guilty of. The upper house was irritated, the blood of the 

* Pari. Hist, iii , 158. t See Appendix, ix. 

t Rushworth,ii.,3, 357. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 221 

people had been spilled ; intestine animosities began to sur- 
mount every other feeling. The leaders of the commons were 
informed that a certain number of members, under the direc- 
tion of the principal lords, proposed to leave London, to seek 
refuge in Essex's camp, to proclaim there that they had with- 
drawn from a parliament the slave of a mob, and to enter into 
negotiations with Oxford. The design failed in consequence 
of the probity of Essex, who refused his concurrence ; and it 
was a great relief to the party to find that their general had 
no idea of betraying them.* But the lords Portland, Love- 
lace,;Conway, Clare, Bedford, and Holland, none the less left 
London and joined the king ; and the earl of Northumberland 
retired to his castle of Petworth. Illustrious names, which, 
though not constituting the entire strength of parliament, had 
served as its shield and invested it with distinction. Astonished 
to find themselves alone, some of the citizen-chiefs seemed 
almost intimidated ; Pym himself was accused of holding cor- 
respondence with the enemy. "j" On the other hand, the most 
violent demagogues, the most fiery zealots, began to ' give 
expression to their secret feelings ; John Saltmarsh, afterwards 
chaplain in Fairfax's ai'my, maintained, that it was essential, 
at whatever price, to prevent the union of the king and the 
people, and that if the king would not yield all they demanded, 
he must be extirpated, he and his race, and the crown given 
to some one else. The pamphlet in which this appeared was 
reported to the house of commons, but Henry Martyn spoke 
in its defence. "I see," said he, " no reason to condemn Mr. 
Saltmarsh ; 'tis better one family should be destroyed than 
many." " I move," said sir Nevil Poole, " that Mr. Martyn 
be ordered to explain what one family he means." " The 
king and his children," replied Martyn, without hesitation 
(Sept. 9) ;:]: a violence of language till then unprecedented, 
and which the party who gave way to it, were far from being 
able to act up to. No news came from Scotland ; it was not 
even known whether the commissioners had landed, and every 
day they feared to hear the king was marching on London, 
or that he had laid siege to Gloucester, the last place remain- 
ing to parliament in the west of the kingdom, and which alone, 
by interrupting the communications of the royal armies be- 

* Clarendon, ii., 485. t Pari. Hist., iii., 165. | Whitelocke, 72. 
19* 



222 HISTOEY OF THE 



tween the south-west and the north-east, prevented them from 
acting in concert.* 

Passions were modified by danger ; parties seriously ex- 
amined their position. Neither the one nor the other was 
strong enough readily to crush its adversary, and be still in a 
situation to carry on, with advantage, war or peace. Instead 
of seeking deliverance, the moderate in weakness, the zealots 
in frenzy, the former comprehended that before they treated 
they must conquer ; the latter, that to obtain victory, it was 
their part to serve, that of their rivals to command. All 
distrust was laid aside for a while, all private ambition post- 
poned. A committee, comprising some of the warmest par- 
tisans of war,! went to Essex (Aug. 4),:}: informed him of the 
measures that had just been taken to recruit and make full 
provision for his army, inquired what else he needed, and, 
in a word, entrusted the destiny of the country to his hands, 
with the assurance of the complete confidence reposed in him 
by parliament. On their part, the earl and his friends applied 
themselves to war, as earnestly as though they had never 
formed any other wish :§ Holies, who had applied for pass- 
ports, intending to retire with his family to the continent, re- 
called the application, and remained ; everywhere those who 
had been lately accused of cowardice or treason, took the lead 
in preparations, efforts, and sacrifices ; and their fiery adver- 
saries, now reserved and docile, seconded them zealously, but 
without clamor. They even, almost without resistance, 
allowed Henry Martyn to be expelled the house, and sent to 
the Tower for his last outbreak (Aug. 16), || so firm was their 
resolution to sacrifice everything to temporary unanimity, the 
only means of safety. This wise conduct soon produced its 
fruit ; while Waller and Manchester were each forming an 
army of reserve, levies of men, money, and provision of all 
sorts, destined for the army of Essex, the only one at the time 
fit to resume warlike operations, proceeded with unprecedented 
rapidity. Four regiments of the London militia volunteered 
to serve under him ; and on the 24th of August, after a solemn 

* Whitelocke, 72. 

t St. John, Strode, and Crew, with whom, after some opposition, 
was associated Mr. Pym. 

X Journals, Commons. § Rushworth, ii., 3, 291. 

II Pari. Hist., ill., 161. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 223 

review on Hounslow Heath, in pi'esence of nearly all the 
members of both houses, the earl departed at the head of foui-- 
teen thousand men, to proceed by forced marches to the assist- 
ance of Gloucester, which the king, as had been feared, had 
been closely blockading for the last fortnight. 

It was much to his own regret that Charles, after his late 
victories, had not made a more decisive attempt on London 
itself; a resolution to that effect had been formed, and on a 
plan which seemed to promise success : while the king ad- 
vanced from west to east, lord Newcastle, victorious also in 
Yorkshire, was to have marched from north to south, and the 
two great royalist armies would have met under the walls of 
the city. After the capture of Bristol, Charles immediately 
sent to lord Newcastle, sir Philip Warwick, one of his most 
faithful adherents, to communicate this plan, and to request 
him to put himself in motion. But the lords attached to the 
king's party were not generals whom he could dispose of at 
his pleasure ; they had received from him their commission, 
not their power ; and, satisfied with upholding his cause in 
places where their influence prevailed, had no wish, by re- 
moving thence, to lose their independence with their means of 
success. Newcastle, haughty, grand in his tastes, fond of 
pomp and ease, dreaded the fatigue and annoyance of contra- 
diction ; and surrounded himself by a little court, whither the 
elegance of his mind and manners attracted agreeable men, 
neither wished to lose himself in the crowd of courtiers at 
Oxford, nor to take in the king's army a lower grade than the 
uncouth, ill-bred foreigner, prince Rupert. After having 
coldly listened to the proposals brought by Warwick, he re- 
lated to him, with great savor, the story of the Irish arch-rebel, 
Tyrone, who, being taken prisoner by the lord-deputy Mount- 
joy, and brought up to queen Elizabeth ; and Tyrone perceiv- 
ing the deputy waiting in the privy chamber among the 
nobility and gentry there, without any distinguishing character 
of the greatness he held in Ireland, vented himself to a coun- 
tryman of his, as thus : " I am ashamed to have been taken a 
prisoner by yon great man, who now in a crowd makes him- 
self so low and common, as to be watching for a woman's 
coming out." And then intimated that as long as Hull re- 

* May, ii., 103 ; Holies, Memoirs (1699), 22. 



224 HISTORY OF THE 



mained in the hands of the enemy, he would not leave York- 
shire.* Warwick transmitted this answer to the king, who 
dared not resent it. Some still advised him to march upon 
London, and this was the queen's opinion ; but he had not 
much taste for hazardous enterprises, less, however, from fear 
of personal danger, than of compromising his dignity ; already, 
the year before, after the battles of Edgehill and Brentford, 
his pride had been wounded, at being compelled, when nearly 
at the gates of the capital, to retrograde. Many good officers 
advised the siege of Gloucester, some with disinterested views, 
others in the hope of a rich booty ; colonel William Legge 
even boasted that he had assured correspondence with Edward 
Massey, the governor. j" The king at last assented to this 
plan, and on the 10th of August his army, which he com- 
manded in person, occupied the heights overlooking the town, 
defended only by a garrison of fifteen hundred men, besides 
the inhabitants. 

On his arrival, he at once summoned the place to surrender, 
giving two hours for an answer. Befoi'e the expiration of 
that time, two deputies from the town, serjeant-major Pudsey 
and a citizen, presented themselves at the camp, both pale, 
thin men, dressed in black, and with heads closely shaved ; 
" We bring to his majesty," said they, " an answer from the 
godly city of Gloucester ;" and, on being introduced to the 
king, they read a letter, which ran thus : " We, the inhabit- 
ants, magistrates, officers, and soldiers within this garrison of 
Gloucester, unto his majesty's gracious message return this 
humble answer, ' That we do keep this city, according to our 
oath and allegiance, to and for the use of his majesty and his 
royal posterity ; and do accordingly conceive ourselves wholly 
bound to obey the commands of his majesty signified by both 
houses of parliament : and are resolved, by God's help, to 
keep this city accordingly.' " On hearing this brief reply, 
delivered in a firm, clear tone, at the strange appearance of 
the messengers, who stood motionless before the king awaiting 
his answer, a movement at once of surprise, derision, and 
anger, was about to manifest itself on the part of the courtiers ; 
but Chai'les, as grave as his enemies, repressed it with a ges- 
ture, and dismissed the deputies with these words: "If you 

* Warwick, Mem., 243. t Clarendon, ii., 470. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 225 

expect help, you are deceived ; Waller is extinct, and Essex 
cannot come." The messengers had no sooner re-entered the 
town, than the inhabitants, setting fire to the suburbs, left 
themselves nothing to defend but that which was within the 
walls.* 

For twenty-six days (Aug. 10 — Sept. 5), by their indefati- 
gable valor, they frustrated all the efforts of the besiegers ; 
except a hundred and fifty men, kept in reserve, the whole 
garrison were constantly on foot ; in all their labors, in all 
their dangers, the citizens took part with the soldiers, the 
women with their husbands, the children with their mothers. 
Massey even made frequent sallies, and only three men took 
advantage of them to desert. f Tired of so long a delay, 
attended by neither glory nor rest, the royal army, in a spirit 
of revenge, licentiously devastated the country round ; the 
officers even frequently employed their men to carry off from 
his house some rich farmer or peaceable freeholder of the 
other side, who only regained his liberty on payment of 
ransom. ij: Within the camp, insubordination, without, the 
hatred of the people, daily increased. An assault might have 
been attempted ; but that of Bristol, of such recent memory, 
had cost so dear, that none dared propose it. The king only 
looked for success by starving out the place, when, to his 
extreme surprise, he heard that Essex was approaching. 
Prince Rupert, detaching a corps of cavalry from the army, 
vainly endeavoi'ed to stop him ; the earl advanced without 
suffering himself to be turned from his road, driving the enemy 
before him. He was already within a few miles of the camp, 
already the king's horse had fallen back on the advanced post 
of his infantry, when, in the hope of delaying the earl, if only 
for a day, Charles sent him a messenger with proposals of 
peace : " The parliament," answered Essex, " gave me no 
commission to treat, but to relieve Gloucester ; I will do it, or 
leave my body beneath its walls !"§ — " No propositions ! no 
propositions !" shouted the soldiers, when they heard of the 
arrival of a trumpeter from the king. Essex continued his 
march, and the next day, the 5th of September, as he was 

* Clarendon, ii., 474 ; May, iii., 96 ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 286. 
t May, iii., 99; Rushworth, ut sup. % Clarendon, ii., 512. 

§ May, iii., 105 ; Clarendon, ii., 516 ; Whitelocke, 72; Rushworth, 
ii., 3, 292. 



226 HISTOKY OF THE 



deploying his army on the heights of Presbury, five miles from 
Gloucester, the sight of the king's quarters in flames informed 
him that the siege was raised.* 

He hastened to enter the town (Sept. 8), conveying thither 
provisions of all kinds, loaded the governor and his soldiers 
with praise, congratulated the citizens on their courage, which 
had saved the parliament, by giving it time to save themselves ; 
he in his turn received, in church, under his windows, as he 
passed along the streets, demonstrations of ardent gratitude, 
and at the end of two days, turned back towards London 
(Sept. 10) ; for his immediate mission had been accomplished, 
and it was scarcely of less importance to return to the parlia- 
ment with the only army capable of protecting it. 

Everything seemed to promise him a return as favorable 
as his expedition had been : for several days he had utterly 
misled his enemies as to his route ; Cirencester, with a great 
store of provisions, had fallen into his hands ; his cavalry had 
sustained with glory several attacks of prince Rupert and his 
dreaded horse ; when, on approaching Newbury, on the 19th 
of September, he found that the enemy had got before him, 
that they occupied the town and neighboring heights, that 
the road to London was barred against him, and that a battle 
only could throw it open. The king himself was at the head 
of his army, in an advantageous position, within reach of such 
succors as he might need from the garrisons of Oxford and 
Wallingford. The country, indisposed to the parliamenta- 
rians, carefully concealed all they had. Whatever the chances 
of a battle might be, they must be incurred, both for the sake 
of passing forward, and to escape death by famine. 

Essex did not hesitate ; the next morning (Sept. 20) at 
daybreak, placing himself at the head of his advanced guard, 
he attacked the principal height and dislodged the regiments 
which occupied it. Engaging by turns with every corps and 
against every position, the battle lasted till night, and was so 
valiantly disputed that both parties, in their accounts of the 
affray, took pride in commending their enemies. The royalists 
were animated by the hope of repairing a defeat which had 
interrupted the course of their victories, the parliamentarians 
by that of not losing, when so near its attainment, the fruit of 



May, ut sup. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. 227 

a victory which had counterpoised so many reverses. The 
London militia in particular performed prodigies of valor; 
twice did prince Rupert, after having broken the enemy's 
norse, charge them, without making the least impression upon 
their close ranks, bristling with spears. The general officers, 
Essex, Skippon, Stapleton, Merrick, exposed themselves like 
the common soldiers ; and the very domestics and workmen 
and camp-followers, rushed to the field, and fought as bravely 
as the bravest officers. At nightfall, each army retained 
its position. Essex, indeed, had somewhat gained ground, 
but the royal troops blocked up his passage, and he expected 
to have to renew the attack next day, when, to his great 
astonishment, the first rays of morning showed him his enemies 
retreating and the road clear. He hastened to make the most 
of this opportunity, and pushing his march, with no other 
impediment than a few fruitless charges of prince Rupert's 
horse, arrived the next day but one at Reading, clear of all 
danger.* 

The violence of this engagement had dispirited the royalists, 
not inferior in courage but far less pertinacious than their 
adversaries, and as ready to despair as to hope. Their loss, 
moreover, had been great, and such as ever makes the deepest 
impression upon the imagination of a king. More than twenty 
officers of distinction had fallen, some of them illustrious by 
their merit as well as by their rank : lord Sunderland, scarcely 
twenty-three years old, recently married, and already endeared 
by his qualities and opinions to all the wise leaders, to all the 
good protestants of his party ;f lord Caernarvon, an excellent 
officer, invaluable to the king for the strict discipline he main- 
tained, beloved by the soldiers for his justice, and so scrupu- 
lous an observer of his word that nothing could induce him to 
continue in the army of the west after prince Maurice, who 
commanded it, had violated the articles of capitulation made 
with the towns of Weymouth and Dorchester ;:f lord Falkland, 
the glory of the royalist party, a patriot, though proscribed 
at London, respected by the people, though a minister at 
Oxford. There was nothing to call him to the field of battle, 
and his friends had more than once reproached him for his 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 293 ; May, iii., 114 ; Whitelocke, p. 74 ; Lud- 
low's Memoirs. 

t Clarendon, ii., 524. t lb. 233—235. 



228 • HISTORY OF THE 



needless temerity ; " My office," he would answer, with a 
smile, " is far from being such as to deprive me of the privi- 
leges of my age ; a secretary at war should know something 
about war." For some months past he had sought danger 
with eagerness ; the sufferings of the people, the greater evils 
he foresaw, the anxiety of his mind, the ruin of his hopes, the 
continual disquietude of his soul, placed as he was amongst a 
party, whose success he dreaded almost as much as its defeat, 
everything had contributed to plunge him into bitter despon- 
dency ; his temper was soured ; his imagination, naturally 
brilliant, various and gay, had become fixed and sombre ; 
inclined by taste and habit to peculiar elegance in toilette, he 
had of late taken no care either of his apparel or of his person ; 
no conversation, no employment had any longer charms for 
him ; sitting with his friends, his head buried in his hands, he 
would, after a protracted silence, sorrowfully murmur, 
"Peace! Peace!" The prospect of some negotiation alone 
revived him. On the morning of the battle, those around him 
were astonished to find him more cheerful than of late ; he 
seemed, too, to give a long unwonted attention to his dress : 
" If I be killed to-day," said he, " I would not they should 
find my body in foul linen." His friends conjured him to stay 
away : sadness once more stole over his features. " No," he 
said, " I am weary of the times ; I foresee much misery to my 
country ; but I believe I shall be out of it before night," and 
he joined lord Byron's regiment as a volunteer. The action 
had scarcely commenced, when a ball hit him in the lower 
part of the stomach ; he fell from his horse, and died without 
any one having observed his fall, the victim of times too rugged 
for his pure and sensitive virtue. His body was not found 
till next day ; his friends, Hyde in particular, preserved an 
inconsolable remembrance of him ; the courtiers heard with- 
out much emotion of the death of a man who was foreign to 
their ways and feelings ; Charles manifested decent regret,, 
and felt himself more at ease in the council.* 

Essex had just arrived at Reading, when a deputation from 
both houses came to express their gratitude, to provide for the 
wants of his army, and to inquire his wishes (Sept, 24). f 
Not only was the parliament saved, but it was in a position to 



* Clarendon, ii., 526 ; Whitelocke, 70. 
f Journals, Commons ; Whitelocke, 74. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 229 

think itself secure from the recurrence of such perils as it had 
just escaped. Equal success had crowned its negotiations ; 
while Essex and its army were raising the siege of Gloucester, 
Vane, arrived at length in Edinburgh, was perfecting a close 
alliance with the Scots. Under the name of " a solemn league 
and covenant," a political and religious treaty, which devoted 
to the defence of the same cause the united strength of the 
two kingdoms, was voted on the same day, by the convention 
of the states and the general assembly of the church of Scot- 
land (Aug. 17) ;* the next day, Scottish commissioners set out 
for London, where both houses, after having consulted the 
assembly of divines, also sanctioned the covenant (Sept. IS);*]" 
and, a week after (Sept. 25), in the church of St. Margaret, 
Westminster, all the members of parliament, standing un- 
covered, with hands raised to heaven, took the oath of ad- 
hesion to it, first verbally, and then in writing.:}: The covenant 
was received in the city with the most fervent enthusiasm ; it 
promised a reform of the church and a speedy succor of twenty- 
one thousand Scots ; the presbyterians thus at once saw their 
fears dissipated and their wishes fulfilled. The day after the 
ceremony (Sept. 26), Essex made his entry into London ; the 
house of commons, preceded by the speaker, went m a body 
to Essex-house, to compliment him ; the lord mayor and the 
aldermen, in scarlet robes, came to render thanks " to the 
protector and defender of their lives and fortunes, and of their 
wives and children." The flags taken from the royal army 
at Newbury were exhibited to public view ; one in particular 
attracted attention, representing the exterior of the house of 
commons, with the heads of two criminals figured above, and 
this inscription : ut extra, sic intra. ^ The people thronged 
round these trophies ; the militia, who had shared in the ex- 
pedition, related all the details ; everywhere, in domestic con- 
versations, in sermons, in the groups formed in the streets, the 
name of Essex was loudly shouted or silently blessed. The 
earl and his friends resolved to make the most of this triumph. 

* Burnet, Mem. of the Hamiltons, 239 ; Neal, iii., 56 ; Baillie, i., 381 

t Pad. Hist, iii., 169. 

t Pari. Hist, iii., 173 ; Neal, iii., 62 ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 475. The 
covenant was signed by two hundred and twenty-eight members of the 
commons 

§ Whitelocke, 75. 

20 



230 HISTORY OF THE 



He went to the house of peers, tendered his resignation, and 
begged that he might be allowed to retire to the continent 
(Oct. 7). No public danger, he said, made it a matter of duty 
for him to stay ; he had already endured too many bitter an- 
noyances in his command, and he foresaw their speedy re- 
newal ; for if sir William Waller were still to possess a com- 
mission independent of him, while the title of general-in-chief 
left upon him alone the entire responsibility, another had the 
right to withhold obedience ; he had too deeply experienced the 
anguish of this situation longer to endure it. Upon this de- 
claration, the lords, astonished, or feigning to be so, resolved 
that they would demand forthwith a conference with the com- 
mons ; but at that very moment a message arrived from 
the commons which rendered a conference unnecessary ; 
informed of what was passing, the commons hastened to an- 
nounce to the lords that Waller offered to resign his com- 
mission, to receive, in future, his instructions from the general- 
in-chief, and not from the parliament ; and they requested the 
appointment of a committee, which should forthwith settle, to 
the earl's satisfaction, this pamful affair. The committee was 
named, and the matter settled ere the house rose.* Waller 
and his friends submitted without a murmur ; Essex and his 
triumphed without arrogance ; and the reconciliation of parties 
seemed consummated at the very moment the struggle was re- 
commencing. 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 177 ; Whitelocke, 75 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 231 



BOOK THE FIFTH. 
1643—1645. 

State of parties and rise of the independents — Proceedings of the court 
at Oxford — The king concludes a truce with the Irish — Parliament 
at Oxford — Death of Pym — Campaign of 1644 — Battle of Marston- 
moor — Reverses of Essex in Cornwall — Misunderstanding between 
the presbyterian leaders and Cromwell — Attempts at negotiation — 
Self-denying ordinance — Trial and death of Laud — Negotiations at 
Uxbridge — Re-organization of the parliamentary army — Fairfax ap- 
pointed general — Essex gives in his resignation. 

The joy of the presbyterians was at its height : the parliament 
owed to their chief its salvation ; their enemies were silenced ; 
the Scottish army, near at hand, promised them unfailing 
support ; they alone, consequently, would henceforth dispose 
of reform and of war, and might at their pleasure continue or 
suspend either. 

Within the house, as without, in London and in the counties, 
a fit of religious fervor and tyranny soon manifested their 
empire. The assembly of divines received orders to prepare 
a plan of ecclesiastical government (Oct. 12) ;* four Scottish 
ministers were summoned to work out, in concert with the as- 
sembly, the great design of the party — uniformity of worship 
in the two countries (Nov. 20). f The committees appointed 
to investigate, in each county, the conduct and doctrine of the 
ecclesiastics in office, redoubled their activity and rigor ; 
nearly two thousand ministers were ejected from their livings ;'^ 
many, prosecuted as anabaptists, Brownists, independents, &c., 
found themselves thrown into prison by the very men who, a 
short time before, had cursed with them their common perse- 

*Neal, iii., 123. 

t They were Henderson, Rutherford, Gillespie, and Baillie — Baillie, 
i., 398; Godwin, i., 349. 

t The writers of the episcopal party have carried the number to 8,000, 
their adversaries reduce it to under 1,600. The estimate I have adopted 
is that which results from the information given by Neal, iii., Ill — 113. 



232 HISTORY OF THE 



cutors. In the city, whoever refused to subscribe'the covenant 
was declared incapable of sitting in the common council, or , 
even of voting at the elections of common councilmen (Dec. 
20).* The parliament, from the beginning of the war, had 
ordered all the theatres to be closed, without pronouncing any 
religious anathema against them ; merely saying, that times 
of public affliction should be devoted to repentance and prayer, 
rather than to pleasure (Sept. 2).f The same prohibition was 
now extended to all the popular games hitherto in use on Sun- 
days and holidays throughout the kingdom ; not one was ex- 
cepted, however great its antiquity, however manifest its harm- 
lessness. The maypoles, which for ages had been erected, as 
tokens of public joy at the return of spring, were everywhere 
pulled down, and orders given that no new ones should be 
erected ; and if even children infringed these laws, their 
parents expiated each ebullition of infantine mirth by a fine.ij: 
Archbishop Laud, who had been three years left forgotten in 
prison, was all at once called to the bar of the upper house, 
and summoned to answer the charges of the commons (Nov. 
13). § Fanaticism counts hatred and vengeance among its 
duties. 

Similar zeal was displayed for war : proud of having had 
so large a share in the late victories, the presbyterians of the 
city no longer spoke of peace ; a great number of rich citi- 
zens equipped soldiers, and even offered to serve in person. 
One of them, Roland Wilson, the heir expectant to an im- 
mense business, and 2000Z. a year in landed property, joined 
Essex's army at the head of a regiment levied at his own ex- 
pense, j] Even some of the leaders, who had been so friendly 
on all occasions to negotiation. Holies, Glynn, Maynard, ha- 
rangued the common council, exciting them to their utmost 
efforts. Never had the party appeared more energetic, nor in 
more certain possession of power. 

Yet its downfal was near at hand. Engaged, from the out- 
set, in a two-fold reform, that of the church and that of the 
state, it did not follow both in the name of the same views. 
In religion its faith was ardent, its doctrines simple, firm, con- 
nected. The presbyterian system, that government of the 

* Neal, iii., 66. t Pari. Hist, ii., 1461. 

t Neal, iii., 139. The fine was twelvepence. 

§ Pari. Hist., iii., 183. || Whitelocke, 76 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 233 

church by ministers equal among themselves and deliberating 
in concert, was not, in its eyes, a human, pliant institution 
which men could modify at will, according to time and cir- 
cumstances — it was the only legitimate system, a government 
existing by divine right, even the law of Christ. The party 
insisted upon the triumph of this system without limitation, at 
whatever price, as a holy and indispensable revolution. In 
politics, on the contrary, notwithstanding the harshness of its 
acts and of its language, its ideas were vague and its inten- 
tions temperate ; it was carried away by no systematic belief, 
no passion truly revolutionary ; it loved monarchy though it 
fought against the king, respected prerogative though it labored 
to bring under subjection the crown, trusted in the commons 
alone, yet felt towards the lords neither ill-will nor contempt, 
obeying ancient customs as well as new necessities, forming 
to itself no precise views, either as to the principles or the 
consequences of its conduct, deeming its aim only legal re- 
form, and wishing for nothing more. 

Thus agitated by contrary feelings, by turns imperious and 
wavering, fanatical and moderate, the presbyterian party had 
not even leaders sprung from among its own ranks, and uni- 
formly animated by sentiments conformable with its own. It 
followed in the steps of the political reformers, the first inter- 
preters and true representatives of the national movement. 
The alliance was natural and necessary to it ; natural, for 
they sought, in common with itself, to reform and not to abo- 
lish the government ; necessary, for they were in possession 
of power, and maintained it by the superiority of their rank, 
their wealth, their intellect ; advantages which the most 
ardent presbyterians never thought of contesting with them. 
But in accepting, even, in case of need, purchasing by great 
concessions the support of the sectaries, the majority of the 
political reformers did not share their opinions or views as to 
the church ; a moderate episcopacy, restricted to the legal 
administration of ecclesiastical affairs, would have better 
suited them ; and they accordingly lent their aid to the pres- 
byterians with reluctance, and secretly did all they could to 
retard their progress. The energy of the party in the reli- 
gious revolution was thus frustrated by leaders whom yet it 
neither could nor would forsake, and their union was only 
complete and sincere on the question of political reform, or, in 
20* 



234 HISTORY OF THE 



Other words, in that cause wherein leaders and party had 
neither intractable passions to satisfy, nor absolute principles 
to carry out. 

Now, at the end of 1643, political reform — legitimate poli- 
tical reform, at least — was consummated : abuses no longer 
existed ; they had achieved all the laws they thought neces- 
sary, and modelled institutions as well as they could ; nothing 
was wanting to complete the work which the defenders of 
ancient liberties and the presbyterian sectaries alike desired 
and could in concert accomplish. But the religious revolu- 
tion was scarcely begun, and political reform, wavering and 
ill-secured, threatened to become revolution. The time, then, 
was at hand, in which the internal defects of the, till then, 
dominant party, the incoherence of its composition, of its 
principles, of its designs, must inevitably become manifest. 
Every day it was obliged to tread in diiferent paths, to attempt 
incongruous efforts. What it sought in the church it rejected 
in the state ; it was fain, constantly shifting its ground and its 
language, to invoke in turn democratic principles and passions 
against the bishops, monarchical and aristocratical maxims 
and influences against rising republicanism. It was a strange 
sight to see the same men demolishing with one hand and 
destroying with the other — now preaching up innovations, 
now cursing the innovators ; alternately daring and timid, at 
once rebels and despots ; persecuting the bishops in the name 
of liberty, the independents in the name of power ; arrogating 
to themselves, in a word, the privilege of insurrection and 
of tyranny, while daily declaiming against tyranny and insur- 
rection. 

The party, moreover, found itself at this time forsaken, or 
disowned, or compromised by several of its leaders. Some, 
such as Rudyard, careful above all things of their own self- 
respect, of the claims of virtue, retired from the conflict, or 
only appeared at long intervals, and then to protest rather 
than act. Others, less honest, such as St. John, or more per- 
severing and bolder, as Pym, or concerned chiefly for their 
own personal safety, sought to conciliate, or, at all events, to 
keep fair with the new party, of whose speedy accession 
to power they felt certain. Many, already corrupted, had 
renounced all patriotic hopes ; and no longer troubling them- 
selves about anything but their own fortunes, formed in the 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. ^ 235 

committees invested with the management of affairs a rapa- 
cious coalition, which distributed offices, confiscations, and 
good things of all sorts to one another. Among the lords 
hitherto engaged in the national cause, several, as we have 
seen, had lately forsaken it, to go and make their peace 
at Oxford ; others, withdrawing entirely from public affairs, 
retired to their country seats, and, to avoid new pillage, new 
sequestration, negotiated alternately with the court and the 
parliament. On the 22d of September, only ten lords re- 
mained in the upper house ; on the 5th of October but five.* 
An order for calling over the names at each sitting,-[ and the 
fear of thus having their absence officially verified, brought a 
few back to Westminster ; but the higher aristocracy, daily 
more suspected by, and more estranged from, the people, be- 
came an incumbrance rather than a support to the presbyte- 
rians ; and while their religious fanaticism alienated from 
them able defenders of the public liberties, their political mo- 
deration prevented them from casting off uncertain and com- 
promising allies. 

Moreover, the party had been in the ascendant for three 
years : whether it had or not, in church or state, accomplish- 
ed its designs, it was at all events by its aid and concurrence 
that, for three years, public affairs had been conducted ; this 
alone was sufficient to make many people weary of it ; it was 
made responsible for the many evils already endured, for the 
many hopes frustrated ; it was denounced as being no less 
addicted to persecution than the bishops, no less arbitrary than 
the king ; its inconsistencies, its weaknesses, were recalled 
with bitterness ; and independently of this, even without fac- 
tious or interested views, from the mere progress of events 
and opinions, there was felt a secret need of new principles 
and new rulers. 

Both were ready, and, to seize the direction of affairs, only 
wanted an opportunity. Long before the commencement of 
the troubles, when the presbyterians began merely to display 
an intention of imposing on the national church a republican 

* Journals, Lords. The ten lords present on the 22d of September, 
were the earls of Bolingbroke, Lincoln, Stamford, and Denbigh ; vis- 
count Say, and the barons Grey, Wharton, How.ard, Hunsdon, and 
Dacre. 

tib. 



236 HISTORY OF THE 



constitution, and to maintain in it, under that form, the uses 
of power as well as of faith, and thus to dispute with episco- 
pacy the heritage of popery, the independents, Brownists, ana- 
baptists, openly demanded why a national church should ex- 
ist at all, and by what title any power whatsoever, popery, 
episcopacy, or presbyterianism, arrogated to itself the right 
of bowing down Christian consciences beneath the yoke of a 
fallacious unity. Every congregation of the faithful, said 
they, inhabitants of the same or neighboring places, who as- 
semble freely together in one common faith to praise the 
Lord, was a true church, over which no other church could 
justly have authority, and which had a right to choose for 
itself its own ministers, to regulate its own worship, to govern 
itself by its own laws. 

On its first appearance, the principle of liberty of conscience, 
thus proclaimed by obscure sectaries, amidst the errors of a 
blind enthusiasm, was treated as a crime or as madness. Its 
asserters themselves seemed to uphold, without understandixig 
it, and less from reason than from necessity. Episcopalians 
and presbyterians, preachers and magistrates, all alike pro- 
scribed it : the question how and by whom the church of 
Christ was to be governed, continued to be almost the only 
point discussed ; all thought they had simply to choose be- 
tween the absolute power of the pope, the aristocracy of 
the bishops, and the democracy of the presbyterian clergy ; 
it was not asked whether these governments were legitimate 
in their origin, whatever their form or appellation. 

There was, however, a great movement agitating all things, 
even those which did not outwardly seem affected by it ; every 
day brought forward some test which no system could evade, 
some argument which the dominant party attempted in vain 
to stifle. Called upon, from day to day, to consider some new 
aspect of human affairs, to discuss opinions, to repel preten- 
sions till then unheard of, the national mind by such work 
became emancipated, and made use of its new liberty, either 
to soar to more extended ideas on man and society, or at once 
audaciously to shake off all old prejudices, all restraint. At 
the same time practical liberty, in matters of faith and 
worship, was almost absolute ; no jurisdiction, no repressive 
authority, had yet taken the place of that of episcopacy ; and 
the parliament, occupied in conquering its enemies, troubled 



ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. 237 

itself very little about the pious escapades of its partisans. 
Presbyterian zeal sometimes obtained from the houses me- 
nacing declarations against the new sectaries ; sometimes, the 
fears and hatred of the political reformers coinciding with 
those of their devout allies, they employed in concert measures 
of rigor against their adversaries. An ordinance, destined, 
according to the preamble, " to put down the slanderous pa- 
pers, books, and pamphlets by which religion and government 
had for some time been defamed," abolished the liberty of the 
press, hitherto tolerated, and subjected to a strict censorship 
all publications whatever (June 11, 1643).* But power can- 
not stop those who precede it in the movement by which it is 
itself impelled. At the end of a few weeks, the royalists and 
episcopalians alone felt the weight of these restrictions ; the 
new sects evaded or defied them ; and, every day more nu- 
merous, more various, more ardent, as independents, Brown- 
ists, anabaptists, antipsedobaptists, quakers, antinomians, fifth- 
monai'chy men, pervaded every corner of the land. Under 
the very shadow of presbyterian domination, the revolution 
was, at one and the same time, raising, up against that party a 
host of enthusiasts, philosophers, and freethinkers. 

All questions henceforward took a new turn ; the social 
fermentation changed its character. Powerful, respected tra- 
ditions had hitherto directed and restrained the views of poli- 
tical, and even of religious reformers ; to the first, the laws of 
old England, such at least as they imagined them to have 
been, to the latter, the constitution of the church, such as it 
already existed in Scotland, Holland, and Geneva, served at 
once as a model and a curb ; however daring their enterpris- 
es, neither had given way to vague desires, to unlimited pre- 
tensions : all was not innovation in their designs, nor conjec- 
ture in their hopes ; and if they misconceived the tendency of 
their acts, they could at least assign an object in them. No 
decided aim guided the steps of their rivals, no tradition, his- 
torical or legal, set bounds to their thought ; confident in its 
strength, proud of its lofty aspirations, its holiness, or its dar- 
ing, they awai'ded to it the right of deciding, of ruling all 
things ; and taking it for their sole guide, sought, at whatever 
price, philosophers the truth, enthusiasts the Lord, the free- 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 131. 



238 HISTORY OF THE 



thinkers mere success. Institutions, laws, customs, events, 
everything was called upon to regulate itself according to the 
reason or will of man ; everything became the subject of new 
combinations, of learned creations ; and in this bold under- 
taking everything seemed legitimate, on the faith of a princi- 
ple or a religious ecstasy, or in the name of necessity. The 
presbyterians proscribed royalty and aristocracy in the church ; 
why retain them in the state ? The political reformers had 
intimated their opinion, that if, in the last resort, the king or 
the lords obstinately persisted in refusing their assent to a 
beneficial measure, the will of the commons ought, of its own 
authority, to carry the point ; why not say this distinctly and 
openly ? Why invoke the sovereignty of the people only in 
a desperate case and to legitimate resistance, when it ought to 
be the basis of government itself and of legitimate power ? 
After having shaken off the yoke of the popish and of the 
episcopal clergy, the nation was in danger of undergoing that 
of the presbyterian clergy. What was the good of a clergy ? 
by what right did priests form a permanent, rich, and inde- 
pendent body, authorized to claim the aid of the magistrate ? 
Let all jurisdiction, even the power of excommunication, be 
withdrawn from them ; let persuasion, preaching, teaching, 
prayer, be the only sources of influence left to them, and all 
abuse of spiritual authority, all difficulty in making it accord 
perfectly with the civil power, would immediately cease. Be- 
sides, 'tis in the faithful, not in the priests, that legitimate 
power, in matters of faith, resides : 'tis to the faithful it ap- 
pertains to choose and appoint their ministers, and not to the 
ministers to appoint one another, and then impose themselves 
on the faithful. Nay, is not every one of the faithful a minis- 
ter himself, for himself, for his family, for all those Christians, 
who, touched by his words, shall hold him inspired from on 
high, and shall be willing to unite with him in prayer ? Who 
would dare contest with the Lord the power of conferring his 
gifts on whom he pleases and as he pleases ? Whether to 
preach or to fight, it is the Lord alone who chooses and con- 
secrates his saints ; and when he has chosen them, he entrusts 
to them his cause, and reveals to them alone by what means 
it shall triumph. The free-thinkers applauded this language : 
so that the revolution was carried out, no matter to them by 
what means, or from what motives. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 239 

Thus arose the party of the independents, far less nume- 
rous, far less deeply rooted in the national soil than that of the 
presbyterians, but already possessed of that ascendency ever 
achieved by a systematic and definite principle, always ready 
to give an account of itself, and to bear without flinching all 
consequences. England was then in one of those glorious 
and formidable crises, in which man, forgetting his weakness, 
remembering only his dignity, has at once the sublime ambi- 
tion of obeying pure truth alone, and the insane pride of attri- 
buting to his own opinions all the rights of truth. Politicians 
or sectaries, presbyterians or independents, no party would 
have dared to think itself above the obligation of having right 
on its side, and being able to prove it. Now the presbyteri- 
ans were not equal to this test, for their wisdom was founded 
on the authority of traditions and laws, not upon principles, 
and they could not repel by mere reason the arguments of 
their rivals. The independents alone professed a simple doc- 
trine, strict in appearance, which sanctioned all their acts, 
sufficed for all the wants of their situation, relieved the strong, 
minded from inconsistency, the sincere froin hypocrisy. They 
alone also began to pronounce some of those potent words, 
which, well or ill-understood, arouse, in the name of its no- 
blest hopes, the most energetic passions of the human heart ; 
equality of rights, the just distribution of social property, the 
destruction of all abuses. There was no contradiction be- 
tween their religious and political systems ; no secret strug- 
gle between the leaders and their men ; no exclusive creed, 
no rigorous test rendered access to the party difficult ; like 
the sect from which they had taken their name, they held '^ 
liberty of conscience a fundamental maxim, and the immen- 
sity of the reforms they proposed, the vast uncertainty of their 
designs, allowed men of the most various objects to range be- 
neath their bannei's ; lawyers joined them, in hopes of depriv- 
ing the ecclesiastics, their rivals, of all jurisdiction and power ; 
liberal publicists contemplated by their aid the formation of a 
new, clear, simple plan of legislation, which should take from 
lawyers their enormous profits and their immoderate power. 
Harrington could dream among them of a society of sages ; 
Sidney, of the liberty of Sparta or of Rome ; Lilburne of the 
restoration of the old Saxon laws ; Harrison, of the coming of 
Christ ; even the no-principle of Henry Martyn and Peter 



240 HISTORY OF THE 



Wentworth was tolerated in consideration of its daring : re- 
publicans or levellers, reasoners or visionaries, fanatics or men 
of ambition, all were admitted to make a common stock of 
their anger, their theories, their ecstatic di'eams, their in- 
trigues ; it was enough that all, animated with equal hatred 
against the cavaliers and against the presbyterians, would 
rush on with the same fervor towards that unknown futurity 
which was to satisfy so many expectations. 

No victory of Essex and his friends, on the battle field, or 
in Westminster-hall, could stifle or even long repress such 
dissensions ; they were as publicly known at Oxford as in 
London ; and all sagacious men, parliamentarians or royalists, 
took them for the basis of their combinations. From all sides 
the king received information of, and was urged to profit by 
them. Courtiers or ministers, intriguers or sincere friends, 
each had his private intelligence on the subject, his proposals, 
his suggestions ; some urged that war should be pushed for- 
ward without interruption, certain that the rival factions would 
soon listen rather to their private enmities than to their com- 
mon danger ; others, on the contrary, advised that, by the 
mediation of the lords who had sought refuge at Oxford, par- 
ticularly the earls of Holland and Bedford, negotiations should 
be opened up with Essex and his party, who, in point of fact, 
had never ceased to desire peace ; others even px'oposed making 
advances to the leaders, already well known, of the independ- 
ents, with whom, they said, better terms could be made ; and 
lord Lovelace, with the king's consent, kept up a close corres- 
pondence with sir Harry Vane, little thinking that Vane, on 
his side, was acting under the instructions of his own party, 
in order to ascertain the state of things at court. But none of 
these counsels were adopted.* It was with great difficulty that 
the lords who had deserted parliament, obtained admission to 
Oxford at all ; at the first rumor of their appi'oach, general 
indignation was loudly expressed against them ; the privy 
council solemnly assembled, deliberated at great length as to 
what reception should be given them, and, notwithstanding the 
prudent representations of Hyde, who had recently been ap- 
pointed chancellor of the exchequer, Charles, though he con- 
sented to receive them, decided that they should be coolly 
treated. f In vain did lord Holland, the most elegant and 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 199; Whitelocke, SO. + Clarendon, ii., 4S9. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 241 

shrewdest of courtiers, contrive, by the aid of Mr. Jermyn, to 
regain the queen's favor ;* in vain did he exert all his inge- 
nuity to resume his former familiarity with the king, now 
affecting to whisper in his ear, now succeeding under some 
pretext, in drawing him into the embrasure of a window, so 
as to have the opportunity, or at least to give himself the ap- 
pearance of holding a private conversation with him ;■[ in vain, 
even at the battle of Newbury, did he fight bravely as a volun- 
teer, and offer his blood as a pledge of his renewed fealty ; 
nothing removed the haughty reserve of the king, nor put a 
stop to the clamors of the court ; and finding their services 
pertinaciously rejected, the refugee lords now only considered 
how they might best escape from so disagreeable a position. 
The advocates of a vigorous war were heard with more favor, 
but with as little effect ; the ill success of the siege of Glouces- 
ter had thrown Oxford into a state of impotent anarchy and 
cabal ; each blamed the other for that fatal enterprise ; the 
council complained of the disorderly conduct of the army ; the 
army insolently defied the council ; prince Rupert, though 
formally exempted from obeying even on a day of battle any 
person but the king himself,:}: was jealous of the general-in- 
chief; the general and great lords murmured loudly against 
the independence and churlish uncouthness of prince Rupert. 
The king, who respected, in the person of his nephews, the 
dignity of his own blood, could not bring himself to decide 
against them in favor of a subject, and sacrificed to this ridi- 
culous pride the rights, even the services of his most useful 
friends. Hyde alone freely endeavored to correct these errors 
in his sovereign, and sometimes with success ; but Hyde him- 
self, new to the court, without any distinction or power beyond 
that which his office gave him, needed the king to support him 
against the queen's temper, or the intrigues of jealous cour- 
tiers ; he maintained his i-eputation as an influential councillor 
and wise man, but without exercising any real ascendency, 
without obtaining any important result. In short, discord was 
as great at Oxford as at London, and far more fatal ; for in 
London it precipitated, at Oxford it paralysed the progress of 
things. 

It was amidst such embarrassments, and when, in his heart, 

* Clarendon, ii., 203, 256. f lb.. 498. { lb., 63. 

21 



243 HISTORY OF THE 



he was perhaps as tired of his party as he was of his people, 
that Charles learned the new alliance between Scotland and 
the parliament, and that thus another of his kingdoms was pre- 
paring to make war against him. He forthwith ordered the 
duke of Hamilton, who, having regained his confidence, had 
been appointed his commissioner at Edinburgh, to prevent this 
union at whatever cost. The duke, it is said, was empowered 
to propose that, for the future, a third of the offices in the royal 
household should be secured to the Scots ; that the counties 
of Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, formerly 
belonging to their territory, should be again annexed to it; 
that the king himself should fix his residence at Newcastle, 
and the prince of Wales establish himself and court in Scot- 
land.* Such promises, if indeed they were made, were obvi- 
ously insincere, obviously incapable of accomplishment, and 
even had the Scottish parliament been disposed to regard thein 
as other than a mere attempt to deceive, a recent event ren- 
dered such a delusion impossible. The earl of Antrim had 
just been arrested in Ireland by the Scottish troops quartered 
in Ulster, a few hours after his disembarkation ', and on his 
person had been found the proofs of a plan formed between 
Montrose and him, during their stay with the queen at York, 
to transport into Scotland a numerous body of Irish Roman 
catholics, to raise the highlanders of the north, and thus make 
a powerful diversion in favor of the king. The design was 
evidently on the point of being carried into execution, for 
Montrose had rejoined the king during the siege of Gloucester, 
and Antrim had just come from Oxford. As on the occasion 
of his last journey to Scotland, the king then was meditating 
the darkest designs against his subjects, at the very moment 
he was making them the most glowing proposals. The par- 
liament at Edinburgh forthwith concluded its treaty with 
that at Westminster, and sent information of all these par- 
ticulars. f 

It transmitted at the same time details of a still more im- 
portant discovery it had made ; lord Antrim's papei^s showed 
pretty manifestly that the king was maintaining a constant 
correspondence with the Irish rebels ; that he had several times 
received their proposals, their offers ; that he was even on the 



* Burnet, Own Times (Oxford, 1823), i., 61 
t Laing, Hist, of Scotland, iii., 256, 



4 

ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 243 

point of concluding with them a suspension of arms, and pro- 
mised himself, from this arrangement, the most favorable re- 
sults for the next campaign.* It was all perfectly true : 
Charles, while always cursing her, when he spoke to England, 
had long been negotiating with rebellious Ireland. "j" The war, 
kindled by insurrection, had continued in this unhappy country 
without intermission, but to no purpose. Ten or twelve thou- 
sand soldiers, ill-paid, seldom relieved, were insufficient to sub- 
due it, though enough to prevent it from effecting emancipa- 
tion. In the month of February, 1642, before the breaking 
out of the civil war, parliament had desired to make a great 
effort to put down the rebellion ; a loan was opened to meet 
the expenses of a decisive expedition ; and the estates of the 
rebels, which by future confiscations would inevitably lapse to 
the crown, had been appropriated, by anticipation, upon a cer- 
tain scale, for the repayment of the subscribers.:}: Large sums 
had been thus collected, and some succors sent to Dublin ; but 
the civil war broke out ; overwhelmed with its own affairs, 
parliament thought of Ireland only at long intervals, without 
vigor or result, merely to calm, when they became too clamor- 
ous, the complaints of the protestants of that kingdom, and, 
above all, to render the king responsible in the eyes of Ireland 
for all the calamities that might arise. Charles paid quite as 
little attention, and made quite as few sacrifices to the interests 
of his Irish protestant subjects ; and while he reproached par- 
liament with having appropriated to its own use a portion of 
the money levied for their service, he himself intercepted con- 
voys destined to supply them with provisions, and took from 
the arsenals of Dublin the arms and ammunition of which they 
had such urgent need.§ But the principal protestants of Ire- 
land, aristocrats by situation, were attached to episcopacy and 
to the crown ; the army reckoned among its officers a great 
number of those whom, as cavaliers, parliament had been 
anxious to send out of the way ; the earl of Ormond, their 
general, was rich, brave, generous, and popular ; he gained 

* Laing, Hist, of Scotland, iii., 256. 

t His correspondence with lord Ormond leaves no doubt of it; Carte's 
Life of Ormond, iii., passim ; Mr. Brodie has skilfully collected the 
proofs of this in his Hist, of the British Empire, iii., 459, in the note. 

% May, i., 2, 47. 

§ Carte's Life of Ormond, ii., appendix 3, 5. 



244 HISTORY OF THE 



two battles over the rebels,* and gave the king all the honor 
of his success. The parliamentary party rapidly declined in 
Ireland ; the magistrates who were devoted to it were replaced 
by royalists : the parliament sent over two members of the com- 
mons as commissioners,-]' to regain some of their lost power ; 
but Ormond forbade them to enter the council, and at the end 
of four months felt himself strong enough to compel them to 
return to England (Feb.). All the civil and military power 
was from that time in the hands of the king, who, relieved from 
a troublesome though ineffectual surveillance, no longer hesi- 
tated to prosecute the design to which at once his inclination 
and his difficulties urged him. The queen had regularly 
maintained with the Irish catholics a correspondence, of which 
her husband was doubtless not ignorant ; the insurrection no 
longer merely presented, as in its commencement, the furious 
ebullitions, the hideous excesses of a savage populace ; a sove- 
reign council of twenty-four, established at Kilkenny (since 
Nov. 14, 1642), governed it with prudence and regularity ; 
already more than once it had addressed dutiful and affection- 
ate messages to the king, entreating him no longer to perse- 
cute, for the pleasure of enemies, faithful subjects whose only 
desire was to serve him. Charles did not, as yet, consider 
himself in sufficient danger, nor so wholly relieved from the 
necessity of conciliating the opinion of England, as to accept 
openly such an alliance ; but he might, at least, he thought, 
show the Irish some favor, and recal to England the troops 
who fought against them in his name, to employ them against 
more odious and more formidable rebels. Ormond received 
orders to open negotiations to this effect with the cour^cil of 
Kilkenny,^ and meanwhile, to provide the reason or at least 
the excuse of necessity, nothing was talked of but the distress, 
real enough for that matter, to which the protestant cause and 
its defenders were reduced in Ireland. In a long and pathetic 
remonstrance, addressed to the castle of Dublin, the army set 
forth all its grievances, all its misery, and declared its resolu- 
tion of quitting a service to which it was prevented from doing 

justice. Memorials sent to Oxford and London conveyed to 

« 

* The battles of Kilrush and Ross, 
t Goodwin and Reynolds, in the autumn of 1642. 
X Ormond's commission was dated January 11th, 1643; the negotia- 
tions began in the course of the month of March following. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 245 

the king and to parliament the same declaration and the same 
complaints.* The negotiations proceeded ; at the period of 
Antrim's arrest they were on the very point of being con- 
cluded ; and towards the end of September, a few days before 
that on which parliament solemnly accepted at Westminster 
the covenant with Scotland, England learned that the king had 
just signed a truce of a year with the Irish rebels,-]- that the 
English troops who had been sent to repress the insurrection 
were recalled, and that ten regiments would shortly land, five 
at Chester and five at Bristol.:}; 

A violent clamor arose on all sides ; the Irish were to the 
English objects of contempt, aversion, and terror. Even 
among the royalists, and within the very walls of Oxford, dis- 
content was manifested. Several officers quitted lord New- 
castle's army, and made their submission to parliament. § 
Lord Holland returned to London, saying, that the papists 
decidedly prevailed at Oxford, and that his conscience did not 
allow him to remain there any longer. || Lords Bedford, 
Clare, and Paget, sir Edward Bering, and several other gen- 
tlemen, followed his example, covering with the same pretext 
their fickleness or their cowardice. IT The parliament was 
quite ready to receive back the penitents. The king's con- 
duct became the subject of all sorts of popular invectives and 
sarcasms ; his so recent protestations were called to mind, and 
the so haughty tone of his answers, when complaints had been 
made of the correspondence between the court and the rebels ; 
every one took credit to himself for having so sagaciously 
foreseen his secret practices, and was indignant at his having 
flattered himself he could thus impose upon his people, or 
imagine such gross want of faith could meet with success. It 
was much worse when it became known that a considerable 
number of Irish papists were among the recalled troops ; and 
that even women, armed with long knives, and attired in 
savage costume, had been seen in their ranks.** Not content 
with leaving the massacre of the Irish protestants unavenged, 
the king then was actually enlisting in his service the fero- 
cious assassins of the English protestants. Many people, 

* Rushworth, vi., 537, and following. 

t Signed Sept. 5, 1643, at Sigginstown, in the county of Kildare. 
j Godwin, Hist, of the Commonwealth, i., 279. § Whitelocke, 76 
II lb. IT lb., 81 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 189. ** Whitelocke, 82. 

21* 



246 HISTORY OF THE 



even of a condition superior to the passionate prejudices of 
the multitude, thenceforth bore towards the king a profound 
hatred, some because of his duplicity, others on account of 
the favor he showed to the odious papists ; and his name, 
hitherto respected, was now frequently mentioned with insult. 
Speedily informed of this state of things and of the en- 
deavors of parliament to fan the flame, Charles, feeling in- 
sulted that any one should dare to judge of his intentions by 
his acts instead of by his words, sent, in a state of high indig- 
nation, for Hyde, and said he thought there was . too much 
honor done to those rebels at Westminster in all his declara- 
tions, by his mentioning them as part of the parliament, 
which, as long as they should be thought to be, they would 
have more authority, assembled where they were first called, 
than all the other members convened anywhere else. He 
said the act for their continuance was void from the begin- 
ning, for that a king had it not in his power to bar himself 
from the prerogatives of dissolving parliament ; and, at all 
events, that they had forfeited any right by their rebellion, 
and he therefore desired a proclamation to be prepared, 
declaring them actually dissolved, and expressly forbidding 
them to meet, or any one to own them or submit to them as 
a parliament. Hyde listened with astonishment and anxiety ; 
for the mere idea of such a measure appeared to him insanity. 
" I see," he replied, " your majesty has well considered the 
argument, which I have not. It is one which calls for very 
serious reflection. For my own part, I cannot imagine that 
your majesty's forbidding them to meet any more at Westmin- 
ster, will prevent one man the less going there. On the con- 
trary, your prohibition may have the effect of bringing back 
to them many who have severed from them. It may be that 
the act in question is void, and I am inclined to hope so ; but 
till the parliament itself shall declare this, no judge, much 
less no private man, 'will declare such invalidity. It was the 
first powerful reproach they corrupted the people with against 
your majesty, that you intended to dissolve this parliament, 
and in the same way, repeal all the other acts made by that 
parliament, whereof some are very precious to the people. 
As your majesty has always disclaimed any such thought, 
such a proclamation now would confirm all the jealousies and 
fears so excited, and trouble many of your true subjects. I 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 247 

conjure your majesty to reflect seriously before you carry this 
design any further."* 

As soon as they heard how frankly Hyde had spoken to 
the king, nearly all the members of the council expressed 
their concurrence in his opinion. With all his haughtiness, 
Charles, in their company, was wavering and timid ; objec- 
tions embarrassed him, and he usually gave way, not knowing 
what to answer, or how to put an end, even with his own 
council, to discussions which displeased him. After a few 
days of hesitation, more apparent than real, the project was 
abandoned. Yet some decisive measure seemed necessary, if 
only to keep the royalist party on the alert, and not to leave 
the parliament, in this interval of peace, the advantage of 
engrossing the impatient activity of men's minds. Some one 
proposed, since the name of parliament exercised such an in- 
fluence over the people, to assemble at Oxford all those mem- 
bers of both houses who had withdrawn from Westminster 
Hall, and thus oppose to a factious and broken-up parliament, 
a parliament undoubtedly legal and regular, since the king 
would form part of it. The proposal did not please Charles ; 
a parliament, however royalist, was matter of suspicion and 
distaste to him ; he must then listen to its counsels, be subject 
to its influence, perhaps condescend to its desires for peace, 
and so compromise, in his opinion, the honor of the throne. 
The queen's opposition was still more decided ; an English 
assembly, whatever its zeal for the royal cause, could not fail 
to be adverse to the catholics and her favorites. Yet the pro- 
posal once known, it was difficult to reject it ; the royalist 
party had received it with transport ; even the council forcibly 
urged its advantages, the subsidies which the new parliament 
would vote to the king, the discredit into which that at West- 
minster would fall, when it should be seen how many members 
had quitted it. Charles, accordingly, despite his own repug- 
nance, assented ; and such was the tendency of public feel- 
ing, that the intention of dissolving a rebellious parliament 
had for its sole effect the formation of a second parliament. f 

The measure at first caused some anxiety in London ; it 
was known that the royalist party were at the same time re- 

* Clarendoft, Memoirs, 206. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 194. The royal proclamation convoking the par- 
liament at Oxford, bears date 22d of December, 1643. 



248 HISTORY OF THE 



newing their attempts in the city ; that it was in contemplation 
to negotiate a treaty of peace directly with the citizens, with- 
out the intervention of parliament ; that the basis of this treaty 
was already agreed upon, amongst others the acknowledgment 
of the loans effected in the city, the interest upon which was 
very irregularly paid by parliament, and which the king rea- 
dily offered to guarantee the prompt liquidation of.* Out of 
London, another plot was also discovered, formed it is said by 
the moderate party and a few obscure independents, to pre- 
vent the entry of the Scots into England, and to shake off the 
yoke of the presbyterians,-f no matter at what price. The 
commons, lastly, had to deplore the loss of the oldest and per- 
haps most useful of their leaders : Pym had just expired (Dec. 
8), after a few days' illness — a man of a reputation less bril- 
liant than that of Hampden, but who, both in private delibe- 
rations and in public debate, had rendered the party services 
no less important ; firm, patient, and able ; skilful in attack- 
ing an enemy, in directing a debate or an intrigue, in exciting 
the anger of the people, and in securing and fixing to his 
cause the great lords who seemed wavering ;:j: an indefatigable 
member of almost every committee, the framer of well nigh 
all the decisive measures of his party, ever ready to undertake 
duties which others avoided as difficult and troublesome ; in 
a word, regardless of labor, annoyances, wealth, glory, he 
placed his whole ambition in the success of his party. A 
little before his illness, he published a justification of his con- 
duct, especially addressed to the friends of order and peace, 
as if he felt some regret for the past, and in secret feared lest 
he should be blamed for the events of the future. § But death 
spared him, as it had done Hampden, the pain of going beyond 
his opinions, on the one hand, or belying his past life, on the 
other ; and far from malevolently pointing out these slight in- 
dications of doubt in the last days of this veteran of national 
reform, the men who wei'e preparing to convert reform into 
revolution, Cromwell, Vane, Haslerig, were the first to show 
honor to his memory : Pym's body lay for several days in 
public, either to gratify the wish of the people who crowded to 
view it, or to contradict the report spread by the royalists, that 

* Pari. Hist., iii. ; Milton, Hist, of England, book iii. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 200 ; Whitelocke, 79. X Clarendon, ii., 693. 

^ See Appendix, x. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 249 

he died of the pedicular disease ; a committee was ordered to 
inquire into the state of his fortune, and to erect a monument 
to him in Westminster Abbey ; the whole house attended his 
funeral, and a few days after, undertook the payment of his 
debts, amounting to 10,000/., all having been contracted, as 
they said, in the service of his country.* 

On the same day that the commons passed these resolu- 
tions, a deputation from the city common council proceeded 
to the house of lords to return thanks to parliament for its 
energy, and the lord general for his bravery, to renew before 
it the oath to live and die in its holy cause, and to invite all 
the members to a grand dinner, in token of union (Jan. 13, 
1644).t 

The parliament resumed all its confidence. On the very 
day when the assembly at Oxford was to meet (22 Jan.), 
there was a call of the house at Westminster ; only twenty- 
two lords sat in the upper house, but in the commons two 
hundred and eighty members answered to their names, and of 
the absentees a hundred were engaged in the public service 
by order of parliament.:}: Both houses resolved that they 
would not allow their rights to be put in question, and that 
they would reject with contempt any correspondence with the 
rivals who were opposed to them. An opportunity soon pre- 
sented itself. A week had scarcely elapsed, when Essex 
transmitted to the upper house, without having opened it, a 
packet which the earl of Forth, the general-in-chief of the 
royal army, had just forwarded to him. A committee was 
appointed to examine its contents ; its report was prompt and 
brief: the packet, it is said, contained nothing addressed to 
parliament, and the lord general had nothing to do but to send 
it back. Essex at once obeyed (1 Feb.)§ 

It was, indeed, to him alone that the despatch was addressed. 
Forty-five lords, and one hundred and eighteen members of 
the commons, II assembled at Oxford, informed him of their 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 186. f lb., 1S7, 198 ; Whitelocke, 80. 

t Pari. Hist., 199; Whitelocke, ut sup. § Pari. Hist., iii., 201. 

II The prince of Wales and the duke of York were at the head of 
this list, which was afterwards augmented by the names of five lords 
and twenty-three members of the lower house, who were not at Ox- 
ford when the letter was sent. There were reckoned, in addition to 
these, twenty-two lords absent on the king's service, nine travelling 
on the continent, two in prison in London, as royalists, and thirty-four 



250 HISTORY OF THE 



installation, of their wishes for peace, of the king's favorable 
disposition, and urged him to employ his influence " to incline 
also to peace those whose confidence he possessed."* By 
these words were designated the houses at Westminster, 
whom Charles persisted in no longer recognizing as a par- 
liament. 

On the 18th of February, another letter reached Essex ; 
the earl of Forth requested a safe-conduct for two gentlemen, 
whom he said the king wished to send to London with in- 
structions relative to peace. " My lord," replied Essex, 
" when you shall send for a safe-conduct for those gentlemen 
mentioned in your letter, from his Majesty to the houses of 
parliament, I shall, with all cheerfulness, show my willing- 
ness to further any way that may produce that happiness that 
all honest men pray for, which is a true understanding be- 
tween his majesty and his faithful and only council, the par- 
liament. "•]• 

Charles congratulated himself on finding his adversaries so 
impracticable, and that his party would thus, at length, be 
reduced to place all their hope in war. But the assembly at 
Oxford was not of the same temper with the king ; it fully 
perceived its weakness, it had great doubts as to the legiti- 
macy of its position — so much so, that it had not dared to take 
the name of parliament — and it regretted in secret that the 
king, by refusing the name to the houses at Westminster, had 
placed such an obstacle in the way of peace. It insisted upon 
his taking, at all events, one step more in the way of concili- 
ation, in his offering some concession calculated to soothe the 
other party. Charles consented to write to the houses, to pro- 
pose a negotiation, and he addressed his letter, " To the lords 
and commons of the parliament assembled at Westminster," 
but in the letter he spoke of " the lords and commons of the 
parliament assembled at Oxford " as their equals (March 3).:j: 
A trumpeter, sent by Essex, soon brought back the answer of 
parliament : it said, " When we consider the expressions in 
that letter of your majesty we have more sad and despairing 

members of the commons absent, either on the king's service, or on 
leave, or from sickness ; in all, there were eighty-three lords, and one 
hundred and sixty-five members of the commons, assembled in parlia- 
ment at Oxford.— Pari. Hist., iii., 218. 

* lb., 209. t lb., 212. J lb., 213. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION, 251 

thoughts of obtaining peace than ever, because thereby, those 
persons now assembled at Oxford, who, contrary to their duty, 
have deserted your parliament, are put into an equal condi- 
tion with it. And this present parliament, convened accord, 
ing to the known and fundamental laws of the kingdom, the 
continuance whereof is established by a law consented unto 
by your majesty, is, in effect, denied even the name of a par- 
liament. And hereupon we think ourselves bound to let you 
know, that we must, in duty, and accordingly are resolved, 
with our lives and fortunes, to defend and preserve the just 
rights and full power of this parliament" (March 9).* 

The assembly at Oxford lost all hope of conciliation, and 
thenceforwai'd regarded itself as sitting without any object. 
It continued, however, to meet till the 16th of April, publish- 
ing long and doleful declarations, voting a few taxes and 
loansjf addressing bitter reproaches to the Westminster par- 
liament, and passing repeated resolutions expressive of fidelity 
to the king ; but it was throughout timid, inactive, and per- 
plexed with its own weakness, and, to preserve at least some 
show of dignity, careful to display in presence of the court 
its anxious desire for legal order and peace. The king, who 
had dreaded the superintendence of such councillors, soon 
found them as troublesome as useless ; they themselves were 
tired of their solemn sittings, without any aim or result. Af- 
ter earnest protestations that he would continue to regulate his 
conduct by their opinions, Charles pronounced their adjourn- 
ment (April 16) •'^ and scarcely were the doors closed behind 
them, than he congratulated himself to the queen upon being 
at last " rid of this mongrel parliament, the haunt of cow- 
ardly and seditious motions. "§ 

The campaign about to open, announced itself under unfa- 
vorable auspices. Notwithstanding the inaction of the two 
principal armies during the winter, war had been carried on in 
the other parts of the kingdom with advantage. In the north- 
west the regiments recalled from Ireland, after six weeks of 
success, had been beaten and almost entirely cut to pieces by 
Fairfax, under the walls of Nantwich, in Cheshire (Jan. 25). || 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 214. t lb., 5; Clarendon, ii., 677. 

I Pari. Hist., iii., 243—247. 

§ Thus he spoke of them, in a letter addressed to the queen, dated 
March 13, 1645 ; Ludlow, 66. 
a Fairfax, 71. 



252 HISTORY OF THE 



In the north, the Scots, under the command of the earl of Le- 
ven, had commenced their march into England (Jan. 19); lord 
Newcastle set forward to meet them, but in his absence Fair- 
fax had defeated, at Selby (April 11), a numerous body of 
royalists ;* and to secure the important fortress of York from 
attack, Newcastle had found himself obliged to shut himself up 
in it (April 19).f In the east, a new army of fourteen thou- 
sand men was forming under the command of lord Manchester 
and Cromwell, and nearly ready to march wherever the ser- 
vice of parliament might require its presence. In the south, 
near Alresford in Hampshire, sir William Waller had gained 
an unexpected victory over sir Ralph Hopton (March 29). A 
few advantages obtained by prince Rupert, in Nottinghamshire 
and Lancashire,:}: did not compensate for such multiplied 
losses. Want of discipline and disorder daily increased in the 
royalist camp ; the honest grew sorrowful and disgusted ; the 
others claimed all the license of war as the reward of courage 
without virtue ; the king's authority over his officers, and that 
of the officers over the soldiers, became day after day less and 
less. In London, on the contrary, all the measures taken were 
at once more regular and more energetic than ever. Com- 
plaints had often been made that the parliament did not act 
with promptitude, that none of its deliberations could remain 
secret, but that the king was immediately informed of them all ; 
under the name of the committee of the two kingdoms, a coun- 
cil composed of seven lords, fourteen members of the commons, 
and four Scottish commissioners, was invested, as to war, the 
relations between the two kingdoms, the correspondence with 
foreign states, &lc., with an almost absolute power (Feb. 16). § 
So great was the enthusiasm in some families that they denied 
themselves one meal a week, to give the value of it to parlia- 
ment ,• an ordinance converted this offering into a compulsory 
tax, for all the inhabitants of London and its environs (March 
26). II Excise duties, till then unknown, were imposed upon 
wine, cider, beer, tobacco, and many other commodities (May 
16, 1643, and July 8, 1644). IT The committee of sequestra- 

* Fairfax, 78. t Rushworth, ii., 3, 620. 

J March the 22d he abandoned the siege of Newark, and in the month 
of April following, took Papworth, Bolton, and Liverpool, in Lanca- 
shire. 

§ Pari. Hist., iii., 246. || Rushworth, ii., 3, 748. 

IT Pari. Hist., iii., 114, 276. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 253 

tion redoubled its severity.* At the opening of the campaign, 
parliament had five armies ; those of the Scots, of Essex, and 
of Fairfax, at the expense of the public exchequer ; those of 
Manchester and Waller, supported by local contributions, col- 
lected vi^eekly in certain counties, which were also called 
upon to find recruits when needed. f These forces amounted 
to more than fifty thousand men,:}: of whom the committee of 
the two kingdoms had the entire disposal. 

Notwithstanding the presumption which reigned at Oxford, 
great anxiety was soon manifested there : the court was asto- 
nished at no longer receiving from London any exact informa- 
tion, and at the designs of parliament being kept so secret ; all 
the people at Oxford could learn was that it was making great 
preparations, that power was becoming concentrated in the 
hands of the boldest leaders, who talked of decisive measures, 
and, in a word, that everything wore a very sinister aspect for 
them. All at once a report spread that Essex and Waller 
were on their march to besiege Oxford. The queen, seven 
months gone with child, at once declared that she would de- 
part ; in vain did a few members of the council venture to 
point out the ill effect of such a resolution ; in vain did Charles 
himself express a wish that she should change her determina- 
tion ; the very idea of being shut up in a besieged town was, 
she said, insupportable, and she should die if she were not 
allowed to retire towards the west, to some place where she 
might be confined, far from the seat of war, and whence she 
could embark for France in case of urgent danger. Furious 
at the suggestion of an objection, she raved, entreated, wept ; 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 174, 257 ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 760. 

t The seven confederate counties of the east, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, 
Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Lincoln, and Ely, were taxed at 
S,445/. a week for the maintenance of Manchester's army. The four 
counties in the south, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey, and Kent, paid 
2,638^. a week for the maintenance of Waller's army. Essex's army 
cost the public treasury 30,504/. a month ; the Scottish army, 31,000/. 
a month. (Rushworth, ii., 3, 621.) I cannot ascertain the exact cost 
of Fairfax's army ; exerything shows it was more irregularly paid than 
the others, and perhaps in part by local contributions, and in part by 
parliament. Fairfax, Memoirs, passim. 

t The Scottish army was 21,000 strong ; that of Essex, 10,500 ; that 
of Waller, 5,100 ; that of Manchester, 14,000 ; that of Fairfax, 5,000 to 
6000 ; in all about 56,000. Rushworth, ii., 3, 603, 621, 654 ; Fairfax, 
passim. 

22 



254 HISTOKY OF THE 



all at last gave way. Exeter was chosen as the place of her 
retreat ; and towards the end of April she quitted her husband, 
who never saw her again.* 

The news which had caused her so much terror was well- 
founded ; Essex and Waller were indeed advancing to block- 
ade Oxford. In another direction, Fairfax, Manchester, and 
the Scots, were to meet under the walls of York, and together 
lay siege to it. The two great royalist cities and the two great 
royalist armies, the king and lord Newcastle, were thus at- 
tacked at once by all the forces of parliament. Such was the 
simple and daring plan that the committee of the two kingdoms 
had just adopted. , 

Towards the end of May, Oxford was almost entirely in- 
vested ; the king's troops, successfully driven from every post 
they occupied in the neighborhood, had been obliged to fall 
back, some into the town, the rest to a fortified point, the only 
one open to them outside the walls, north of the city ; no help 
could arrive in time ; prince Rupert was in the depths of Lan- 
cashire, prince Maurice besieging the port of Lyme, in Dorset- 
shire, lord Hopton, at Bristol, occupied in securing that place 
from the enemy, who had managed to effect a correspondence 
with some of the principal inhabitants. A reinforcement of 
eight thousand men of the London militia enabled Essex to 
complete the blockade. The peril seemed so urgent, that one 
of the king's most faithful councillors advised him to give him- 
self up to the earl. " It is possible," replied Charles, with in- 
dignation, " that I may be found in the hands of the earl of 
Essex, but it will be dead." A report, meantime, circulated 
in London, that, not knowing how to escape, the king was 
forming the resolution, of either coming unexpectedly into the 
city, or putting himself under the protection of the lord-general. 
The alarm of the commons was as great as the king's indigna- 
tion had been. They immediately wrote to Essex, " My lord, 
there being here a general report of his majesty coming to 
London, we, by command of the house, desire your lordship to 
use your best endeavors to find the grounds of it; and if at any 
time you shall understand that his majesty intends to repair 
hither, or to your army, that you presently acquaint the houses, 
and do nothing therein without their advice." Essex compre- 



* Clarendon, ii., 764. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 255 

hended the distrust which lurked beneath these words. He 
answered : " My lord, how the general report is come of his 
majesty's coming to London is all unknown to me. I shall not 
fail, with my best endeavors, to find the grounds of it ; but 
London is the likeliest place to know it, there being no speech 
of it in this army. As soon as I shall have any notice of his 
intention of repairing to the parliament or the army, I shall not 
fail to give notice of it ; I cannot conceive there is any ground 
for it ; but, however, I believe I shall be the last that shall 
hear of it."* 

A very different report, and much more certain, next came 
by surprise upon the parliament and the army ; the king had 
escaped from them. On the 3d of June, at nine o'clock in the 
evening, followed by the prince of Wales, and leaving the duke 
of York and all the court in the place, he had left Oxford, had 
passed between the two hostile camps, and joining a body of 
light troops who awaited him north of the town, speedily put 
himself beyond reach. f 

The astonishment was great, and the necessity of an im- 
mediate resolution evident. The siege of Oxford was now a 
matter of no object ; the two armies had before them nothing 
which required their joint efforts ; the king, at liberty, would 
soon become formidable ; it was above all important to pre- 
vent his rejoining prince Rupert. 

Essex assembled a great council of war, and proposed that 
Waller, less encumbered with heavy artillery and baggage, 
should pursue the king, while he himself should march to- 
wards the west to raise the siege of Lyme, and reduce that 
part of the country to the power of parliament. Waller op- 
posed this plan ; this, he said, was not the destination which 
the committee of the two kingdoms had assigned the two 
armies, in the event of their separating ; it was upon him the 
command in the west was to devolve. The council of war 
concurred with the lord-general ; Essex haughtily demanded 
submission ; Waller obeyed, and began his march, but not 
without having addressed bitter complaints to the committee, 
of the contempt with which the earl had treated its instruc- 
tions.:]: 

* Pari. Hist., ill., 266 ; the letter of the house to Essex is dated May 
,15th, 1664, and his answer is of the 17th of May. 
t Clarendon, ii., 765; Rushworth, ii., 3, 671. 
t Clarendon, ii., 733. 



256 HISTORY OF THE 



Highly indignant, the committee at once brought the matter 
before the house ; and after a debate of which there remains 
no record, an order was despatched to Essex to retrace his 
steps, to go in pursuit of the king, and to leave Waller to ad- 
vance alone into the west, as he should have done in the first 
instance.* 

The earl had entered upon the campaign in no very: agreea- 
ble mood ; intimidated for awhile by their perils and his vic- 
tories, his enemies had, during the winter, recommenced 
assailing him with their suspicions, and creating for him a 
thousand annoyances. Just before his departure, a popular 
petition had demanded the reformation of his army, which the 
commons had received without any manifestation of dis- 
pleasure ;"t" that of Waller was always better provided for, and 
paid with more regularity ;:]: it was evidently against him, 
and to replace him in case of need, that lord Manchester was 
forming a fresh army ; at London and in his camp, his friends 
were indignant that from Westminster-hall, men ignorant of 
warfare should pretend to direct its operations and prescribe 
to generals how to act.§ He answered the committee : " Your 
orders are contrary to military discipline and to reason ; if I >. 
should now return, it would be a great encouragement to the 
enemy in all places. Your innocent, though suspected ser- 
vant, Essex;" and continued his march. || 

The amazed committee suspended the quarrel and their 
anger ; Essex's enemies did not feel themselves strong enough 
to ruin him, nor even to do without him ; they contented them- 
selves for the present with inserting, in the answer they sent 
him, a few words of reprimand for the tone he had essumed jIT 
and he received orders to proceed with the expedition which 
• the preceding message had enjoined him to abandon.** 

The news received from Waller's army had much to do 
with this cautious procedure. After having vainly pursued 
the king, this favorite of' the committee was in his turn me- 
naced with impending danger. As soon as Charles learnt 
that the two parliamentary generals had separated, and that 
he should have but one to grapple with, he stopped, wrote to 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 672. t Whitelocke, 80. 

t Rushworth, ii., 3, 683; Holies, 22. § Whitelocke, 79. 

il Rushworth, ii., 3, 683 ; Clarendon, ii., 733. 
IT Rushworth, ibid. ** Rushworth, ibid. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 257 

prince Rupert to march without an instant's delay to the succor 
of York,* and, by a bold resolution retracing the road he had 
followed in his flight from Oxford, re-entered that city seven- 
teen days after he had quitted it, put himself at the head of 
his troops, and resumed the offensive, while Waller was seek- 
ing him in Worcestershire. At the first report of his move- 
ments. Waller returned by forced marches, for he alone was 
left to cover the road to London ; and soon after, having re- 
ceived a few reinforcements, he advanced with his wonted 
confidence to offer, or, at least, accept battle. Charles and 
his men, filled with that ardor which unexpected success after 
great peril inspires, were still more eager. The action took 
place on the 29th of June, at Cropredy-bridge in Bucking- 
hamshire, and, notwithstanding a brilliant resistance, Waller 
was beaten, even more completely than the conquerors them- 
selves at first supposed. -f 

Good fortune appeared to give Charles a daring, and even 
a skill he had not hitherto manifested. At ease with reference 
to Waller, he at once resolved to march towards the west, to 
fall with his whole disposable force upon Essex, and thus, in 
two blows, destroy the two armies which had lately kept him 
almost a prisoner. Essex, moreover, had appeared under the 
walls of Exeter, and the queen, who resided there, and who 
had been confined only a few days,:j: and was as yet ignorant 
of her husband's success, would again be assailed by all her 
fears. § Charles departed two days after his victory, having 
first, to conciliate the people rather than from any sincere 
wish for peace, sent from Evesham a message to both houses 
(dated July 4, 1644), in which, without giving them the name 
of parliament, he was profuse of pacific protestations, and 
offered once more to open negotiations. || 

But just after his depai'ture from Oxford, and before his 
message reached London, all the fears of parliament were dis- 
pelled ; the face of affairs had changed ; Waller's defeat was 

* His letter is dated June 14, 1644, from Tickenhall, near Bewdley, 
in Worcestershire. It was published for the first time in 1S19, in sir 
John Evelyn's Memoirs, ii., 87. 

t Clarendon, ii., 744 ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 675. 

% June 16, 1644, of the princess Henrietta, afterwards duchess of 
Orleans. 

§ Clarendon, ii., 751; Rushworth, ii., 3, 686. 

II Rushworth, ii., 3, 687. 
22* 



258 HISTORY OF THE 



now only regarded as an unimportant accident : parliament 
had just learned that its generals had obtained near York a 
most brilliant victory, that the town must speedily surrender, 
that, in a word, in the north the royalist party was all but 
annihilated. 

In fact, on the 2d of July, at Marston Moor, between seven 
and ten in the evening, the most decisive battle that had yet 
taken place, had brought about these great results. Three 
days before, at the approach of prince Rupert, who was ad- 
vancing towards York with twenty thousand men, the parlia- 
mentary generals had resolved to raise the siege, hoping that 
they should at least be able to prevent the prince throwing 
succors into the besieged city ; but Rupert defeated their ma- 
noeuvres, and entered York without a battle. Newcastle 
strongly urged him to remain satisfied with this success ; dis- 
cord, he said, was working in the camp of the enemy ; the 
Scots were on bad terms with the English, the independents 
with the presbyterians, lieutenant-general Cromwell with ma- 
jor-general Crawford ; if he must fight, let him at least wait 
for a reinforcement of three thousand men, which would 
shortly arrive. Rupert scarcely listened to what he said, 
bluntly replying that he had orders from the king,* and ordered 
the troops to march upon the enemy, who were retreating. 
They soon came up with their rear ; both parties stopped, 
called in their outposts, and prepared for battle. Almost 
within musket-shot of each other, separated only by some 
ditches, the two armies passed two hours motionless and in 
profound silence, each waiting for the other to commence the 
attack. " What office does your highness destine me ?" asked 
lord Newcastle of the prince. " I do not propose to begin 

* These orders were contained in the letter above mentioned, and 
which directed him to go to the assistance of York. It has been 
matter of great discussion whether it expressly enjoined prince Rupert 
to give battle, or whether he was left at liberty to avoid it ; a puerile 
question ; for, assuredly, if Rupert had thought with Newcastle, that 
a battle ought not to be risked, he would have been wrong in obeying 
orders given at a distance and on mere speculation. Besides, notwith- 
standing what Mr. Brodie and Mr. Lingard have recently said on this 
subject (Hist, of the British Empire, iii., 447 ; Hist, of England, x., 
252), it is by no means probable that the king's letter contained a po- 
sitive order : it is evidently written in the conviction that the siege of 
York could not be raised without a battle, and it is in that sense that 
it speaks of a victory as indispensable. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 259 

the action before to-morrow," Replied Rupert, " you can re- 
pose till then." Newcastle went and shut himself up in his 
carriage. He had scarcely sat down, when a volley of mus- 
quetry informed him that the battle was beginning ; he imme- 
diately proceeded to the scene of action, without assuming 
any command, at the head of a few gentlemen, offended like 
himself with the prince, and like him acting as volunteers. 
In a few moments the moor was the scene of utter disorder ; 
the two armies met, dashed into each other's ranks, got mixed 
up together in mere confusion ; parliamentarians and royalists, 
cavalry and infantry, officers and soldiers, wandered about 
over the field of battle alone or in bands, asking for orders, 
seeking their divisions, fighting when they met an enemy, but 
all without general design or result. First of all, the right 
wing of the parliamentarians was routed ; next, broken and 
panic-struck by a vigorous charge of the royalists, the Scot- 
tish cavalry dispersed ; Fairfax vainly endeavored to keep 
them together ; they fled in all direetions, crying, " Bad luck 
to us ! we are undone !" and they spread the news of their 
defeat so rapidly through the country, that from Newark a 
messenger carried it to Oxford, where, for some hours, bon- 
fires were burning to celebrate the supposed triumph. But 
on returning from the pursuit, the royalists, to their great 
surprise, found the ground they had previously occupied in 
the possession of a victorious enemy ; while the Scottish cavalry 
were flying before them, their right wing, although command- 
ed by Rupert himself, had undergone the same fate ; after a 
violent struggle, they had yielded before the invincible de- 
termination of Cromwell and his squadrons ; Manchester's 
infantry completed their defeat ; and satisfied with having 
dispersed the prince's horse, Cromwell, skilful in rallying his 
men, had returned immediately to the field, to make sure of 
the victory ere he thought of celebrating it. After a moment's 
hesitation, the two armies resumed the conflict, and at ten 
o'clock not a royalist remained on the field, except three 
thousand slain and sixteen hundred prisoners.* 

Rupert and Newcastle re-entered York in the middle of the 
night, without speaking to, without seeing one another ; as 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 631—640; Clarendon, ii., 753; Ludlow, 53; 
Fairfax, 84, &c. ; Hutchinson, Memoirs (ISOS), 205 ; Carte's Letters, 
i , 56 ; Baillie's Letters, ii., 36, 40. 



260 HISTORY OF THE 



soon as they arrived, they exchanged messages : the prince 
sent word to the earl : " I have resolved to depart this morn- 
ing with my horse and as many foot as are left ;" " I am 
going forthwith to the sea-side," replied Newcastle, " to depart 
for the continent." Each kept his word ; Newcastle embarked 
at Scarborough, Rupert marched towards Chester, with the 
wreck of his army, and York capitulated in a fortnight (July 
16).* 

The independent party were in an ecstasy of joy and hope ; 
it was to their chiefs, to their soldiers this brilliant success 
Avas due ; Cromwell's ability had decided the victory ; for the 
first time the parliamentary squadrons had broken the royalist 
squadrons, and it was the saints of the cavaliers of Cromwell 
who had done this. They and their general had, on the very 
field of battle, received the surname of Ironsides. Prince 
Rupert's own standard, publicly exhibited at Westminster, 
attested their triumph ;f and they might have sent to parlia- 
ment more than a hundred flags taken from the enemy, if, in 
their enthusiasm, they had not torn them in pieces to decorate 
their helmets and arms.:]: Essex, indeed, had conquered twice, 
but as if by constraint, to save the parliament from impend- 
ing destruction, and with no other effect ; the saints sought 
the battle, and were not afraid of victory. Were the Scots, 
who had shown such cowardice on this great day, thenceforth 
to pretend to subject them to their presbyterian tyranny ? 
Would peace be any longer spoken of as necessary ? Vic- 
tory and liberty alone were necessary ; it was essential to 
achieve these, at whatever price, and carry out to its full 
extent that blessed reform so often endangered by interested 
or timid men, so often saved by the arm of the Lord. Every- 
where was this language heard ; everywhere did independ- 
ents, freethinkers, or fanatics, citizens, preachers, or soldiers, 
give emphatic utterance to their excitement and their wishes ; 
and everywhere was heard the name of Cromwell, himself 

* Clarendoiij ii., 755. 

t In the middle of the standard was a lion couchant, and behind him 
a mastiff biting at him ; from the mastiff's mouth came a streamer, on 
which was to be read, Kimbolton ; at its feet were several little dogs, 
beneath whose jaws was written, Pym, Pym, Pym ; from the lion's 
own jaws proceeded these words : quousque tandem al utere patienti& 
nostra 7 — Rushworth, ii., 3, 635. 

X Rushworth, ii., 3, 635. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 261 

beyond all others vehement in his expressions, while, at the 
same time, he passed for the most skilful in the contrivance 
of deep designs. " My lord," said he one day to Manchester, 
in whom the party still reposed confidence, " be wholly one 
of us ; talk no more of holding ourselves open to peace, of 
keeping on terms with the lords, of fearing the refusal of 
parliament ; what have we to do with peace and the lords ? 
Nothing will go on right till you call yourself plain Mr. Mon- 
tague ; if you bind yourself to honest folk, you will soon be 
at the head of an army that will give laws to king and parlia- 
ment too."* 

With all the audacity of his hopes, Cromwell himself had 
no idea how near the triumph of his party was, nor how 
hard a fate was shortly to befall that adversary whom he most 
dreaded. 

Essex had advanced further and further into the west, 
encouraged by easy victories, and ignorant of the dangers 
gathering behind him. In three weeks he had raised the 
siege of Lyme, taken Weymouth, Barnstaple, Tiverton, 
Taunton, and dispersed, almost without a blow, the royalist 
troops who attempted to stop him. As he approached Exeter, 
the queen sent to request a safe-conduct to go to Bath or Bris- 
tol, for the purpose of regaining her strength after her confine- 
ment. " If your majesty," he replied, " pleases, I will not 
only give you a safe-conduct, but will wait upon you myself, 
to London, where you may have the best advice and means 
for restoring your health ; but as for either of the other places, 
I cannot obey your majesty's desire without directions from 
the parliament."! Seized with fear, the queen fled to Fal- 
mouth, where she embarked for France (July 14), and Essex 
continued his march. He was still in sight of Exeter when 
he heard that the king, having defeated Waller, was rapidly 
advancing against him, collecting on the way all the forces 
he could command. A council of war being immediately 
called, it was put to the question whether they should go on 
and entrench themselves in Cornwall, or return, seek the king, 
and offer him battle. Essex was of the latter opinion, but 
several of the officers, among others lord Roberts, the friend 
of sir Harry Vane, possessed in Cornwall large estates, of 

* Holies, Memoirs, IS ; Clarendon, ii., 841. 
t Rushworth, ii., 3, 684 ; Whitelocke, 93. 



263 HISTORY OF THE 



which the rents were long in arrear, and they had relied upon 
this expedition to obtain payment from their tenants ; they 
therefore opposed any idea of going back, maintaining that 
the people of Cornwall, oppressed by the royalists, would rise 
at the approach of the army, and that Essex would thus have 
the honor to dispossess the king of this county, hitherto his 
firmest support.* Essex allowed himself to he persuaded, 
and, having sent to London for reinforcement, entered the 
defiles of Cornwall. The people did not rise in his favor, 
provisions were scarce, and the king was already close upon 
him. He wrote again to London, to say that his situation 
was becoming perilous, that it was essential for Waller or 
some one else, by making a diversion on the rear of the king's 
army, to give his an opportunity of escape. The committee 
of the two kingdoms made a great clamor about his misfor- 
tune, and seemed filled with vast zeal to aid him ; public 
prayers were directed (Aug. 13) ;f orders to meet his wishes 
were given to Waller, Middleton, even to Manchester, who 
had returned from the north with a portion of his army ; these 
in their turn manifested the utmost ardor : " Let money and 
men be sent to me," wrote Waller, " God is witness, 'tis not 
my fault I do not advance more quickly ; may infamy and the 
blood that is spilt rest on the heads of those who lay obstruc- 
tions in my way. If money cannot be had, I will march 
without it." But he did not march. Middleton held the 
same language, put himself in motion, and stopped at the first 
obstacle. No corps at all was detached from Manchester's 
army.l Reassured by the victory of Marston Moor, the in- 
dependent leaders. Vane, St. John, Ireton, Cromwell, were 
delighted to purchase by a signal check the ruin of their 
enemy. 

They did not imagine that at that very moment, and in 
his utter distress, Essex held, perhaps, their fate in his hands. 
On the 6th of August, a letter from the king was delivered to 
him at his head-quarters at Lestwithiel, full of expressions of 
esteem and promises, urging him to give peace to his country. 
Lord Beauchamp, the earl's nephew, was the beare^ of the 
message ; several colonels in his army seemed favorable to 

* Clarendon, ii., 767 ; Rushworth, ii., 3, 690. 

t Rushwor'h, ii., 3, 697. f Ludlow, Memoirs, 55 ; Whitelocke, 101. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 263 

It.* " I shall give no answer," said Essex. "I have only 
one advice to give the king ; it is, to return to his parliament." 
Charles did not persist ; perhaps even, notwithstanding the 
disaster at Marston Moor, he did not altogether desire the in- 
tervention of such a mediator ; but peace, in those about him, 
had more earnest partisans ; the spirit of independence and 
examination gained upon the royalists ; the royal name no 
longer exercised its former empire over them, and in their 
meetings many officers freely discussed public affairs and the 
king's conduct. Persuaded that Essex had only rejected the 
proposed negotiation because the king's promises seemed to 
him without adequate guarantee, they resolved to offer him 
their own, and to invite him to an interview with them. Lord 
Wilmot and lord Percy, commanders of the cavalry and artil- 
lery, were at the head of this design ; the one daring, intel- 
lectual, an inveterate drinker, and beloved by the army for 
the jovial affability of his temper ; the other cold and haughty, 
but bold in speech, and keeping a good table, which many of 
the officers shared. Informed of their proceedings, and of a 
letter which was circulating in their name, Charles was ex- 
ceedingly angry ; but the intention pleased even those men 
who blamed the means. The king, not daring to forbid, made 
up his mind to approve of it ; the letter became an official act, 
authorized by him and signed by prince Maurice and the earl 
of Brentford, general-in-chief of the army, as well as by its 
first authoi's ; a trumpeter conveyed it to the enemy's camp 
(Aug. 9). " My lords," replied Essex, " in the beginning of 
your letter you express by what authority you send it ; I, 
having no authority from the parliament, who have em- 
ployed me, to treat, cannot give way to it without breach of 
trust. My lords, I am your humble servant, Essex." So dry 
a refusal greatly piqued the royalists ; all idea of negotiation 
was abandoned ; Wilmot and Percy were deprived of their 
commands, and hostilities took their course. f 

Essex soon found himself in a desperate position ; he fought 
every day, but only to fall every day into greater danger ; his 
soldiers were getting weary of the contest, conspiracies were 

* Among others, colonel Weare and colonel Butler ; Rushworth, ii., 
3, 710. 

t Rushworth, ii., 3, 691—697 ; Clarendon, ii., 777. 



264 HISTORY OF THE 



forming in their ranks ;* the king drew his lines closer and 
closer around him, and erected redoubts on every side ; already 
the earl's cavalry had not space enough to collect forage ; 
there scarcely remained to him any free communication with 
the sea, the only means by which he could obtain provisions ; 
in short, at the latter end of August, he was surrounded so 
closely that from the neighboring heights the royalists could 
see all that passed in his camp. In this extremity, he gave 
orders to the cavalry, commanded by sir William Balfour, to 
make their way, as they might, through the enemy's posts, 
and set out himself with the infantry for Fowey harbor. 
Favored by night and a fog, the cavalry succeeded in passing 
between two royalist divisions ; but the infantry, straggling 
along narrow and miry roads, pursued by the whole of the 
king's army, compelled to abandon at every step cannon and 
baggage, at last lost all hope of safety ; there was a general 
desire expressed to capitulate. Dejected, perplexed, anxious 
to avoid so deep a humiliation, Essex, without consulting any 
one, attended only by two officers,f suddenly quitted the camp, 
gained the coast, and embarked in a vessel which set sail for 
Plymouth, leaving his army under the command of major- 
general Skippon.:}: 

As soon as his departure was known, Skippon called a 
council of war : " Gentlemen," said he, " you see our general 
and some chief officers have thought fit to leave us, and our 
horse are got away ; we are left alone upon our defence. 
That which I propound to you is this, that we having the 
same courage as our horse had, and the same God to assist 
us, may make the same trial of our fortunes, and endeavor 
to make our way through our enemies, as they have done, 
and account it better to die with honor and faithfulness, than 
to live dishonorable." But Skippon did not communicate his 
own heroism to the council ; many officers, brave and faithful 
soldiers, but presbytei'ians, moderate men like Essex, were, 
like him, sorrowful and dispirited. The king proposed to him 
a capitulation on unhoped-for terms ; he only required the 
surrender of the artillery, ammunition and arms ; all the 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 698. 

t Sir John Merrick, who commanded the ai'tillery, and lord Roberts 
himself, who had induced Essex to enter Cornwall. 

t Rushworth, i., 3, 705 ; Clarendon, ii., 787 ; Whitelocke, 98. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 265 



troops, officers, and soldiers were to retain their liberty, and 
were even to be conducted in safety to the next parliamentary 
quarters. These conditions were accepted (Sept. 1) ; and, 
under the escort of some royalist horse, the parliamentarian 
battalions traversed, without a general, without arms, the 
counties which they had just marched through as conquerors.* 

Meantime, Essex landed at Plymouth, and sent an account 
to parliament of his disaster. " It is the greatest blow," he 
wrote, " that ever befel our party ; 1 desire nothing more 
than to come to the trial ; such losses as these must not be 
smothered up."j- A week after, he received from London this 
reply :— 

" My lord, the committee of both kingdoms having ac- 
quainted the houses of parliament with your lordship's letter 
from Plymouth, they have commanded us to let you know 
that as they apprehend the misfortune of that accident, and 
submit to God's pleasure therein, so their good affections to 
your lordship, and their opinion of your fidelity and merit in 
the public service is not at all lessened. And they are re- 
solved not to be wanting in their best endeavors for repair- 
ing of this loss, and drawing together such a strength under 
your^ command as may, with the blessing of God, restore our 
affairs to a better condition than they are now in, for which 
purpose they have written to the earl of Manchester to march 
with all possible speed towards Dorchester, with all the forces 
he can of horse and foot. Sir William Waller is likewise 
ordered to march speedily unto Dorchester, with all his horse 
and foot. The houses have appointed six thousand foot-arms, 
five hundred pairs of pistols, and six thousand suits of clothes, 
shirts, &c., to meet your lordship at Portsmouth, for the arm- 
ijig and encouragement of your forces. And they are confi- 
dent your lordship's presence in these parts for bringing the 
forces together into a body, and disposing of them, will very 
much conduce to the public advantage." 

The surprise of the earl was extreme ; he expected im- 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 704-^709; Clarendon, ut sup. 

t Essex's letter to sir Philip Stapleton, in Rushworth, ii., 3, 703. 

X In Rushworth (ii., 3, 708), we read : " under their command," but 
in the Parliamentary History the text is, " under your command," and 
I have adopted this as by far the most probable. The letter is dated 
Sept. 7, 1644. 

23 



266 HISTORY OF THE 



peachmenl, or at least bitter reproaches ; but his fidelity, so 
recently proved, the very extent of the disaster, the necessity 
of producing an effect on the enemy, induced the wavering 
to rally round his partisans on this occasion, and his adver- 
saries had resolved to abstain from attacking him. Essex, 
embarrassed by his misfortune and his fault, no longer seemed 
to them dangerous ; they knew him well, and foresaw that ere 
long, to save his dignity such violent shocks as these, he would 
withdraw from public life. Till then, by treating him with 
honor, they obtained credit for themselves ; they escaped an 
inquiry, which they might have found disagreeable, into the 
real cause of his defeat ; and, lastly, the favorers of peace 
would now be necessitated to make a new effort for war. Skil- 
ful as earnest, the independent leaders remained silent, and the 
parliament appeared unanimous in sustaining this great reverse 
with dignity. 

Its activity and the firmness of its attitude at first slack- 
ened the king's movements ; he addressed a pacific message 
to the house, and for three weeks contented himself with 
appearing before a few places, Plymouth, Lyme, Portsmouth, 
which did not surrender. But towards the end of September 
he learnt that Montrose, who had long since promised him 
civil war in Scotland, had at last succeeded, and was already 
obtaining one triumph after another. After the battle of 
Marston Moor, disguised as a servant and followed only by 
two companions, Montrose had crossed on foot the borders of 
Scotland and proceeded to Strathern, the house of his cousin, 
Patrick Graham of Inchbrachie, at the entrance into the 
Highlands, to await there the landing of the Irish auxiliaries 
whom Antrim was to send him. By day he hid himself; at 
night he traversed the surrounding mountains, collecting in 
person, from place to place, information from his adherents. 
The news soon reached him that the Irish troops had landed 
(July 8), and were advancing into the country, pillaging and 
ravaging, but not knowing whither to proceed, and seeking the 
general who had been promised them. They were on the con- 
fines of Athol, when Montrose, with a single attendant, sud- 
denly appeared in their camp, dressed as a Highlander. They 
at once acknowledged him their chief. At the news of his 
arrival several clans joined him ; without losing a moment, 
he led them to battle, requiring everything from their eou- 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 267 

rage, giving up everything to their licentious rapacity ; and in 
a fortnight he had gained two battles (at Tippermuir, Sept. 1, 
and at Dee bridge, Sept. 12), occupied Perth, taken Aberdeen 
by storm, raised most of the northern clans, and spread fear to 
the very gates of Edinburgh. 

On hearing this news, Charles flattered himself that the 
disaster of Marston Moor was repaired, that parliament would 
soon find in the north a powerful adversary, and that he him- 
self might without fear proceed to follow up his successes in 
the south. He resolved to march upon London, and to give 
his expedition a popular and decisive appearance, at the mo- 
ment of his departure, a proclamation, sent forth in every 
direction, invited all his subjects in the south and east to rise 
in arms, choose officers for themselves, and joining him on his 
way, march with him to summon the parliament at length to 
accept peace.* 

But parliament had taken its measures : already the com- 
bined troops of Manchester, Waller, and Essex covered Lon- 
don on the west ; never had parliament possessed, upon one 
point, so great an army ; and at the first report of the king's 
approach, it was augmented by five regiments of the London 
militia, under the command of sir James Harrington. At the 
same time, new taxes were imposed ; the commons ordered 
that the king's plate, till then preserved in the Tower, should 
be melted down for the public service. When at last it was 
known that the two armies were in presence of each other, the 
shops wei'e closed, the people rushed to the churches, and a 
solemn fast was ordained, to conciliate the blessing of the Lord 
on the coming battle. f 

In the camp as in the city, it was daily expected : Essex 
alone, ill, despondent, remained inactive in London, though 
invested with the command of the army. Informed of his 
non-departure, parliament charged a joint committee to wait 
on him and renew the assurance of its trusting affection, Es- 
sex thanked the committee, but did not join his army.:j: The 
battle was fought without him, on the 27th of October, at 
Newbury, almost on the same ground on which, the year be- 

* The proclamation is dated from Chard, September 30th, 1644; 
Rushworth, ii., 3, 715. 

t Rushworth, ii., 3, 719—720; Pari. Hist, iii., 294, 295, 308. 
i Whitelocke, lOS ; Pari. Hist., iii., 295. 



268 HISTORY OF THE 



fore, on his return from Gloucester, he had so gloriously con- 
quered. Lord Manchester commanded in his absence. The 
action was long and desperate ; Essex's soldiers in particular 
performed prodigies ; at the sight of the cannon they had 
recently lost in Cornwall, they rushed fiercely on the royal 
batteries, recovered their artillery, and brought it back to their 
own lines, embracing the guns in the transport of their joy. 
On the other hand, some of Manchester's regiments suffered 
a severe check. For awhile, both parties claimed the victory; 
but, next morning, the king, renouncing his project against 
London, commenced his retreat, and proceeded to Oxford to 
take up his winter quarters.* 

Meantime parliament said very little about its triumph ; no 
public thanks were offered up, and the day after the news of 
the battle reached London, the monthly fast, observed by both 
houses, took place, as usual (Nov. 30, 1644), as if there were 
no subject for rejoicing. The public were astonished at so 
much coldness. Disagreeable rumors began to circulate ; the 
victory, it was said, might have been far more decisive ; but 
discord reigned among the generals ; they had suffered the 
king to retreat without impediment, almost in the very face 
of the army, in a bright moonlight, when the least movement 
might have prevented it. It was much worse when the news 
came that the king had just re-appeared in the neighborhood 
of Newbury, that he had, without interruption, removed his 
artillery from Donnington castle (Nov. 9),"j' and even offered to 
renew the battle, without the parliamentary army quitting its 
inaction. The clamor became general ; the house of com- 
mons ordered an inquiry ; Cromwell only waited for this 
opportunity to break out : " It is to the earl of Manchester," 
he said, " all the blame is to be imputed ; ever since the 
battle of Marston Moor, he is afraid to conquer, afraid of a 
great and decisive success ; but now, when the king was last 
near Newbury, nothing would have been more easy than 
entirely to destroy his army ; I went to the general, I showed 
him evidently how this could be done, I desired his leave to 
make the attack with my own brigade ; other officers urged 
this with me, but he obstinately refused ; saying only, that if 

* Whitelocke, 109; Clarendon, ii., S27; Pari. Hist., iii., 296 ; Rush- 
worth, ii., 3, 721—730. 

t Rushw^orth, ii., 3, 729 — 732 : Clarendon, ut sup. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 269 

we were entirely to overthrow the king's army, the king 
would still be king, and always have another army to keep 
up the war ; while we, if we were beaten, should no longer 
be anything but rebels and traitors, executed and forfeited by 
the law." These last words greatly moved parliament, 
which could not endure that any one should suggest a doubt 
as to the legality of its resistance. Next day, in the upper 
house, Manchester answered this attack, explained his con- 
duct, his words, and in his turn accused Cromwell of insubor- 
dination, of falsehood, nay, of treachery ; for on the day of 
the battle, he said, neither he nor his regiment appeared at 
the post assigned to them. Cromwell did not reply to this 
charge, but only renewed his own accusations more violently 
than before.* 

The presbyterians were greatly excited ; for a long time 
past, Cromwell had given rise to much alarm in their minds. 
They had seen him at first supple and fawning with Man- 
chester, exalting him on all occasions at the expense of Essex, 
and acquiring, by degrees, over his army more power than he 
himself had. He had made it the refuge of the independents, 
of sectaries of every class, enemies of the covenant as of the 
king ; under his protection a fanatical license reigned there ; 
each man talked, prayed, and even preached according to his 
own fancy and his own will. In vain, to countervail Crom- 
well's influence, had they appointed colonel Skeldon Craw- 
ford, a Scotchman, and rigid presbyterian, major-general ; all 
that Crawford had done, as yet, was to make an absurd charge 
of cowardice against Cromwell, while Cromwell, constantly 
occupied in detecting his adversary's faults, in depreciating 
him in the opinion of the soldiers, in denouncing him to 
parliament and to the people, soon rendered him incapable of 
doing any harm.f Emboldened by this success, and by the 
visible progress of his party, he had openly declared himself 
the protector of liberty of conscience, and had even obtained 
from parliament, with the aid of the free-thinkers and philoso- 
phers, the formation of a committee (Sept. 13):j: charged to 
inquire how best they might satisfy the dissenters, or at least 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 732—736; Pari. Hist, iii., 297; Ludlow, 63; 
Clarendon, ii., 840; Holies, Memoirs, 19. 
t Baillie's Letters, ii, 40. 
j lb., 57 ; Journals, Commons, Sept. 13. 
23* 



270 HISTORY OF THE 



leave them in peace. Now he attacked Manchester himself, 
never mentioned the Scots but with insult, spoke largely 
of triumphing without them, and even of driving them out of 
England, if they attempted to oppress it in their turn ; in a 
word, carried his daring so far, as to bring into question the 
throne itself, the lords, the whole ancient and legal order of 
the country.* Alarmed and indignant, the leaders of the 
presbyterian and moderate political parties, and the Scottish 
commissioners, Holies, Stapleton, Merrick, Glynn, &c., met 
at Essex's house to devise means for defeating so dangerous 
an enemy. After a long conference, they resolved to consult 
Whitelocke and Maynard, both eminent lawyers and both 
highly respected by the house, and whom they had reason to 
believe favorable to their cause. They were sent for in the 
name of the lord-general, nearly in the middle of the night, 
without their being told for what purpose. They arrived 
somewhat alarmed at the hour and the circumstances. After 
a few compliments : " Gentlemen," said lord Lowden, the 
Scottish chancellor, " you know very well that lieutenant- 
general Cromwell is no friend of ours, and since the advance 
of our army into England, he hath used all underhand and 
cunning means to take oif from our honor and merit of this 
kingdom ; he is also no well-wilier to his excellency, whom 
you and we all have cause to love and honor • you know very 
well the accord betwixt the two kingdoms, and the union by 
the solemn league and covenant, and if any be an incendiary 
between the two nations, how is he to be proceeded against ? 
By our law in Scotland, we call him an incendiary who 
kindleth coals of contention and causeth differences in the 
state, to the public damage, and he is tanquam puilicus hostis 
patricB. Whether your law be the same or not, and whether 
lieutenant-general Cromwell be not such an incendiary as is 
meant by our term, and in which way would be best to take 
to proceed against him, if he be such an incendiary, you 
know best." 

The two lawyers looked at each other ; all were waiting 
for their answer. After a few moments' silence, Whitelocke 
rose, and said : "I see none of this honorable company is 
pleased to discourse further on these points, and I shall there- 

* Whitelocke, 116 ; Journals, Lords, Nov. 28, 1644 ; Clarendon, ut 
sup. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 271 

fore, with submission to his excellency, declare humbly and 
freely my opinion upon those particulars which have been so 
clearly proposed and opened by my lord chancellor. The 
sense of the word ' incendiary ' is the same with us as his 
lordship hath expressed it to be by the law of Scotland ; 
whether lieutenant-general Cromwell is such an incendiary 
cannot be known but by proofs of his particular words or ac- 
tions, tending to the kindling of this fire of contention betwixt 
the two nations, and raising of differences between us. I take 
for a ground that my lord-general and my lords the commis- 
sionei's of Scotland, being persons of so great honor and au- 
thority as you are, must not appear in any business, especially 
of an accusation, but such as you shall see beforehand will be 
clearly made out, and be brought to the effect intended. I 
take lieutenant-general Cromwell to be a gentleman of quick 
and subtle parts, and who hath, especially of late, gained no 
small interest in the house of commons, nor is he wanting of 
friends in the house of peers, nor of abilities in himself to 
manage his own part or defence to the best advantage. I have 
not yet heard any particulars mentioned by his excellency, 
nor by my lord-chancellor or any other, nor do I know any in 
my private observations, which will amount to a clear proof 
of such matters as will satisfy the house of commons that 
lieutenant-general Cromwell is an incendiary, and to be pun- 
ished accordingly. I apprehend it to be doubtful, and there- 
fore cannot advise that at this time he should be accused for an 
incendiary ; but rather that direction may be given to collect 
such particular passages relating to him, and that this being 
done, we may again wait on your excellency, if you please, 
and upon view of those proofs we shall be the better able to 
advise and your lordships to judge what will be fit to be done 
in this matter." 

Maynard concurred with Whitelocke, adding, that the word 
" incendiary " was little used in English law, and would give 
rise to great uncertainty. Holies, Stapleton, and Merrick, 
strongly urged their views, saying, that Cromwell had not so 
much influence in the house, that they would readily take it 
upon themselves to accuse him, and they mentioned facts and 
words which they said clearly proved his designs. But the 
Scottish commissioners refused to engage in the struggle. 
Towards two in the morning, Maynard and Whitelocke I'etired, 



272 HISTORY OF THE 



and the conference had no other result than to excite Crom- 
well to quicken his steps; for "some false brother," says 
Whitelocke, probably Whitelocke himself, " informed him of 
what had passed."* 

Essex and his friends sought another sort of remedy for the 
evil which threatened them ; all their thoughts were directed 
towards peace. The subject had never been wholly withdrawn 
from the consideration of parliament : on one occasion a formal 
motion had produced a debate and a division favorable to peace, 
in which very few votes, that, indeed, of the speaker alone, 
decided the fate of the country (March 29) jf and once again, 
tdie ambassadors of France and Holland, who were continually 
going backwards and forwards between London and Oxford 
and Oxford and London, offered their mediation, rarely sin- 
cere, and always eluded, though with some embarrassment, on 
both sides. :j: So many persons desired peace, that no one would 
have dared to show himself openly opposed to it ; and for the 
last six months, a committee of members of both houses, and 
of Scotch commissioners, had been engaged in framing pro- 
posals on the subject. 

All at once the presbyterian party pressed forward the work ; 
in a few days the proposals were presented to both houses, de- 
bated, and adopted (Nov. 8) ;§ and on the 20th of November 
nine commissioners departed to carry them to the king. They 
thought he was at Wallingford, and presented themselves be- 
fore that place ; after waiting two hours, while their mission, 
their safe-conduct, their retinue, were successively made the 
subjects of quibbling discussion, the governor, colonel Blake, 
at last received them; to tell them that the king was gone, and 
that they would probably find him at Oxford. They wished 
to sleep at Wallingford, but the conversation between Blake 

* Whitelocke, 117; Wood, Athense Oxoniensis, ii., 546. 

t On the motion to appoint a committee to examine the offer of me- 
diation made by the ambassador of Holland, the house of commons 
divided, sixty-four to sixty-four : the speaker gave a casting vote in the 
negative ; Pari. Hist., ii., 253. 

I The ambassadors of Holland offered the mediation of the states- 
general on the 20th of March, the 12th of July, and the 7th of No- 
vember, 1644; the count d'Harcourt, ambassador of France, who 
arrived in London in July, 1644, had an audience with parliament on 
the 14th of August, and left England in February, 1645 ; Pari. Hist., 
iii., 252, 253, 278, 285, 293, 298, 314 ; Clarendon, ii., 602. 

§Parl. Hist., iii., 299. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 273 

and lord Denbigh, president of tlie committee, soon became so 
warm, Blake's language so rude, and the attitude of his gar- 
rison so menacing, that they judged it prudent to retire without 
delay. The next day, on arriving near Oxford, they stopped 
on a little hill, at a short distance from the city, and announced 
themselves to the governor by a trumpeter. Some hours 
passed, and no answer was returned. The king, walking in 
his garden, perceived on the hill the group formed by the com- 
missioners and their suite, inquired who those people were, 
and on being informed, immediately sent Mr. Killigrew with 
orders to introduce them into the city, provide lodgings for them, 
and express his regret that they should have been kept waiting 
so long. As they passed through the streets of Oxford, under 
the escort of a few cavaliers, the populace collected together, 
loaded them with abuse, and even pelted them with stones 
and mud. Taken to a miserable inn, they had scarcely es- 
tablished themselves, when a violent tumult arose near their 
apartment ; Holies and Whitelocke immediately went out ; 
some royalist officers had entered the great room, and were 
quarrelling with the commissioners' people, calling them and 
their masters "wretches," "traitors," "rebels," and not suf- 
fering them to come near the fire. Holies seized one of the 
officers by the collar, and roughly shaking him, pushed him 
out of the room, I'eproaching him for his conduct : Whitelocke 
did the same ; the doors of the inn were closed, and the govern- 
or placed a guard there. In the evening, several members of 
the council, Hyde among others, came to see the commis- 
sionei's, apologized for the disturbance which had taken place, 
manifested an extreme desire to co-operate with them in ob- 
taining peace, and the king sent word that he would receive 
them next day (Nov. 2).* 

The audience was brief: lord Denbigh read the proposals 
of parliament aloud, in presence of the council and the court : 
they were such as the king did not think himself reduced to 
accept ; they required him to surrender his power to the dis- 
trust of parliament, his party to its vengeance. More than 
once a murmur of anger broke forth from among those present ; 
at one time particularly, when lord Denbigh named prince 
Rupert and prince Maurice, who were standing by, as ex- 

* Whitelocke, 112 ; Pari. Hist., ill., 310. 



274 HISTORY OF THE 



eluded from any amnesty, a roar of laughter was on the lips 
of the courtiers ; but the king, turning round with a severe 
look, imposed silence on all, and continued to listen patiently 
and gravely. The reading over : " Have you power to 
treat?" asked he of lord Denbigh. "No, sir; we had in 
charge to bring these propositions to you, and desire your an- 
swer in writing." " Well," replied the king, " I will give it 
you as soon as I can ;" and the commissioners returned to their 
inn.* 

The same evening, with the consent of their colleagues, 
Holies and Whitelocke paid a visit to lord Lindsey, a gentle- 
man of the chamber, and an old friend, whose wounds had 
prevented him from coming to them. They had scarcely 
been with him a quarter of an hour when the king came in, 
and advancing towards them with an air of kindness, said, " I 
am sorry, gentlemen, that you can bring me no better propo- 
sitions for peace, nor more reasonable than these are." " Sir," 
replied Holies, " they are such as the parliament thought fit 
to agree on, and I hope a good issue may be had out of them." 
The king : 'i I know you could bring no other than what they 
would send, but I confess I do not a little wonder at some of 
them, particularly at the qualifications ; surely you yourselves 
cannot think them to be reasonable or honorable for me to 
grant." Holies: " Truly, sir, I could have wished that some 
of them had been otherwise than they are, but your majesty 
knows that these things are all carried by the major vote." 
The king : " I know they are, and am confident you who are 
here and your friends (I must not say your party) in the house, 
endeavored to have had them otherwise ; for I know you are 
well-willers to peace." Whitelocke : •' I have had the honor 
to attend your majesty often here before upon this errand, and 
am sorry it was not to better effect." The king: "I wish, 
Mr. Whitelocke, that others had been of your judgment and 
Mr. Holles's judgment, and then, I believe, we had a happy 
end to our differences before now ; for my part, I do earnestly 
desire peace ; and in order to it, and out of the confidence I 
have of you two that are here with me, I ask your opinion 
and advice what answer will be best for me to give at this 
time to your proposition, which may probably further such a 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 310. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 275 

peace as all good men desire." Holies: "Your majesty will 
pardon us if we are not capable, in our present condition, to 
advise your majesty." Whitelocke : "We now by accident 
have the honor to be in your majesty's presence ; but our 
present employment disables us from advising your majesty, 
if we were otherwise worthy, in this particular." The king: 
" For your abilities I am able to judge, and I now look not on 
you in your employments from the parliament, but as friends 
and my private subjects, I require your advice." Holies : " To 
speak in a private capacity, your majesty sees that we have 
been very free ; and touching your answer, I shall say further, 
that I think the best answer would be your own coming amongst 
us." The king : " How can I come thither with safety ?" 
Holies : " I am confident there would be no danger to your 
person to come away directly to your parliament." The king: 
" That may be a question ; but I suppose your principals who 
sent you hither will expect a present answer to your message." 
Whitelocke : " The best present and the most satisfactory an- 
swer, I humbly believe, would be your majesty's presence 
with your parliament." The king : " Let us pass by that ; 
and let me desire you two, Mr. Holies and Mr. Whitelocke, to 
go into the next room, and a little confer together, and to set 
down somewhat in writing, which you apprehend may be fit 
for me to return as an answer to your message, and that, in 
your judgment, may facilitate and promote this good work of 
peace." Holies : " We shall obey your majesty's command." 

They both went into another room ; and, after some hesi- 
tation, Whitelocke, carefully disguising his handwriting, drew 
up the opinion the king had requested of them ; then, leaving 
the paper on the table, they rejoined his majesty. The king 
went by himself into the room they had quitted, took the 
paper, came back with it, and then, after some conversation, 
very gracious on his part, withdrew. The commissioners 
directly returned to their inn, and maintained with their 
colleagues, a profound silence as to what had passed.* 

Three days after (Nov. 27),* the king sent for the com- 
mittee, and, delivering to lord Denbigh a sealed paper, with- 
out superscription, said : " This is my answer ; take it to 
those who sent you." Surprised at this unusual form, and at 

* Whitelocke, 113 ; Holies, Memoirs, 38. 



276 HISTORY OF THE 



finding the king so obstinate in refusing to give the name of 
parliament to the houses at Westminster, the earl begged 
leave to retire for a moment with his colleagues to deliberate 
on what they should do. " Why should you deliberate ?" 
said the king ; " you have no power to treat ; you told me so 
yourself when you arrived, and I know you have had no post 
since." Lord Denbigh insisted, alleging that the committee 
might perhaps have some observations to offer to his majesty. 
" Gentlemen," said the king, warmly, " I will hear anything 
you have to deliver from London, but none of the fancies and 
chimef as taken up at Oxford ; by your favor, you shall put 
no tricks on me." " Sir," replied the earl, " we are not 
persons to put tricks upon any one, much less upon your 
majesty." " I mean it not to you." " Will your majesty at 
least allow us to inquire to whom this paper is addressed ?" 
" It is my answer ; you must take it, if it were a ballad, or a 
song of Robin Hood." " The business which brought us here, 
sire, is of somewhat more importance than a ballad." " I 
know it ; but I repeat, you told me you had no po^ver to treat ; 
my memory is as good as yours ; you were only charged to 
deliver these proposals to me ; an honest postillion would have 
done as well." " I hope your majesty does not take us for 
postillions." " I do not say that ; but, once more, this is my 
answer; you must take it ; I am not bound to anything more." 
The conversation became warmer every moment. Holies 
and Pierpoint endeavored in vain to get the king to say, that 
he addressed his message to the two chambers. The com- 
missioners at last agreed to receive it in its existing form, and 
quitted the presence. In the evening, Mr. Ashburnham, the 
king's valet-de-chambre, came to them. "His majesty," he 
said, " is sensible some words may have fallen from him in 
his passion that might give discontent ; it was not so intended 
by him, and he desires the best construction may be put upon 
it." The commissioners made protestations of their respect- 
ful deference to the king's words, and set out for London, 
accompanied by a trumpeter, authorized to receive the answer 
of parliament to the sealed paper of which they were the 
bearers.* 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 843; Pari. Hist, iii., 309—312; Whitelocke, 
114. Lord Denbigh's report and Whitelocke's narrative, though both 
eye-witnesses, present several important points of difference here. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 277 

It only contained the request of a safe-conduct for the duke 
of Richmond and the earl of Southampton, by whom the king 
promised to send, in a few days, an express and detailed 
answer. The safe-conduct was at once granted ; and imme- 
diately upon their arrival (Dec. 14), the two lords had an 
audience (Dec. 16). Even they did not bring any answer ; 
their official mission was limited to a request that conferences 
should be opened, and negotiators named on both sides to treat 
of peace. But after delivering this message, they remained 
in London ; the report spread that a crowd of suspected per- 
sons were arriving ; several members of the two houses had 
frequent interviews with the two lords. The common council, 
in which the independents prevailed, manifested great uneasi- 
ness. The two lords were requested to depart ; they still 
lingered under frivolous pretexts. The agitation increased ; 
the passions of the people threatened to break out before 
party intrigues could be accomplished. At last, urged even 
by the friends of peace, the two lords returned to Oxford 
(Dec. 24), and three weeks after their departure, it was 
agreed that forty commissioners, twenty -three from the parlia- 
ments of the two kingdoms, and seventeen from the king, 
should meet at Uxbridge, to discuss regularly the conditions 
of a treaty.* 

But while the presbyterians were negotiating peace, the 
independents were preparing war. On the 9th of December, 
the commons had assembled to take into consideration the 
sufferings of the kingdom, and to devise some remedy for 
them. No one rose to speak ; all seemed expecting some 
decisive measure, of which every one wished to avoid the 
responsibility. After a long silence, Cromwell addressed the 
house : " Now is the time to speak, or for ever hold the 
tongue. The important occasion is no less than to save a 
nation, out of the bleeding, nay almost dying condition, the 
long continuance of the war hath already reduced it to. If 
we do not prosecute this war in a more speedy, vigorous, and 
effectual manner, casting off all lingering proceedings, like 

but they may be explained by the official character of the first of these 
documents, evidently arranged among the commissioners, so that it 
would suit parliament and the occasion. Pari. Hist., iii., 309. 

* Rushworth, ii., 3, 844—846 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 310—320 ; Clarendon, 
ii., 860. 

24 



278 - HISTORY OF THE 



soldiers of fortune beyond sea, to spin out a war, we shall 
make the kingdom weary of us, and hate the name of a par- 
liament. For what do the enemy say, nay, what do many 
say that were friends at the beginning of the parliament ? 
Even this, that the members of both houses have got great 
places and commands, and the sword into their hands, and 
what' by interest in parliament, and what by power in the 
army, will perpetually continue themselves in grandeur, and 
not permit the war speedily to end, lest their own power 
should determine with it. This I speak here to our own 
faces is but what others do utter abroad behind our backs. I 
am far from reflecting on any ; I know the worth of those 
commanders, members of both houses, who are yet in power ; 
but if I may speak my conscience, without reflection on any, 
I do conceive, if the army be not put into another method, and 
the war more vigorously prosecuted, the people can bear the 
war no longer, and will enforce you to a dishonorable peace. 
But this I would recommend to your prudence, not to insist 
upon any complaint or oversight of any commander-in-chief 
upon any occasion whatsoever ; for as I must acknowledge 
myself guilty of oversights, so I know they can rarely be 
avoided in military affairs ; therefore, waiving a strict inquiry 
into the causes of these things, let us apply ourselves to the 
remedy which is most necessary ; and I hope we have each 
true English hearts and zealous affections towards the general 
weal of our mother country, so as no members of either house 
will scruple to deny themselves of their own private interests 
for the public good ; nor account it to be a dishonor done to 
th\?m, whatever the parliament shall resolve upon in this 
weighty matter." 

Another member went on : " whatever is the matter, two 
summers are passed over, and we are not saved. Our victo- 
ries (the price of blood invaluable) so gallantly gotten, and, 
which is more, so graciously bestowed, seem to have been put 
into a bag with holes ; for what we win at one time, we lose 
at another." A summer's victory has proved but a winter's 
story : the game has shut up with autumn, to be new played 
again next spring, as if the blood that has been shed were only 
to manure the field of war, for a more plentiful crop of con- 
tention. I determine nothing ; but this I would say, it is 
apparent that the forces being under several great commanderSj 



ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. 279 

want of good correspondency amongst the chieftains has often- 
times hindered the public service." " There is but one means 
of ending so many evils," said Zouch Tate, an obscure fanatic, 
and whom the importance of his proposal did not draw from 
his obscurity ; " which is that every one of us should freely 
renounce himself. I move, that no member of either house 
shall, during this war, enjoy or execute any office or com- 
mand, civil or military, and that an ordinance be brought in 
accordingly."* 

This proposal was not absolutely new ; already, the year 
before (Dec. 12, 1643), a similar idea had been expressed in 
the upper house, though casually and without result ;f and 
recently (Nov. 14, 1644), the commons, doubtless to appease 
public clamor, had ordered an inquiry^ into the number and 
value of the offices of all kinds held by members of parliament. 
Either by design or from embarrassment, the presbyterians 
hesitated at first to oppose Tate's motion, and it passed almost 
without objection. But two days after, when it was again 
brought forward in the form of a distinct resolution, the debate 
was long and violent, and was renewed four times in the course 
of a week (Dec. 11, 14, 17, 19). It was clear that it was 
intended to take from the moderate politicians, from the pres- 
byterians, from the first leaders of the revolution, the execu- 
tive power, to confine them to Westminster Hall, and to form 
an ai'my independent of parliament. The opposition was 
renewed at each sitting, every time with more warmth. Even 
some who were in the habit of keeping fair with the indepen- 
dents, spoke against the measure. " You know," said White- 
locke, " that among the Greeks and Romans the greatest 
offices, both of war and peace, were conferred upon their 
senators : and their reasons were, because they, having greater 
interests than others, were the more capable to do them the 
greatest service. And having the same interest with the 
senate, and present at their debates, they understood their 
business the better, and were less apt to break that trust 
which so nearly concerned their private interests, which were 
involved with the public. I humbly submit the application to 
your judgment ; your ancestoi's did this ; they thought the 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 3—5 ; Pari. Hist, ill., 326 ; Clarendon, ii., 848 ; 
whose account is evidently inexact. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 187. X Journals, Commonfl. 



280 HISTORY OF THE 



members of parliament fittest to be employed in the greatest 
offices ; I hope you will be of the same judgment, and not at 
this time pass this ordinance, and thereby discourage your 
faithful servants."* 

Others went still further, and openly denounced the secret 
ambition of their rivals. " You talk of self-renouncing," said 
they ; " it will be only the triumph of envy and self-ends. "| 
But the public had little faith in these predictions ; the pres- 
byterian party was worn out and in discredit ; all who did 
not belong to it, saw it fall without regret. Though the inde- 
pendents were far from being in a majority in the house, their 
proposition passed triumphantly through all its stages : in vain, 
as a last endeavor, did the friends of Essex require that he 
should be excepted from the prohibition ; their amendment 
was rejected ; and, on the 21st of December, the ordinance 
was definitively adopted,:}: and transmitted to the house of 
lords. 

The presbyterians rested all their hopes in that house ; the 
peers had an imperative interest in rejecting the bill ; almost 
all of them were affected by it ; by it they would lose every 
vestige of power. But then, herein, as regarded public 
opinion, was precisely a source of discredit and weakness. 
To diminish the effect of this, to free themselves from all sus- 
picion of connivance with the court at Oxford, to discourage 
the royalist plots, always ready to break out, above all, to gra- 
tify the passions of the presbyterian party, the leaders of that 
party, while they sought to check the progress of revolution, 
offered it concessions and victims. Four prosecutions, begun 
long ago, but which had been left in abeyance, were resumed 
and energetically pushed forward ; that of lord Macguire, for 
taking part in the Irish rebellion ; of the two Hothams, father 
and son, for having agreed to surrender Hull to the king ; of 
Sir Alexander Carew for a similar offence in the isle of St. 
Nicholas, of which he was governor ; finally, of Laud, al- 
ready more than once begun, laid aside, and resumed. Mac- 
guire, the Hothams, and Carew, were guilty of recent crimes, 
legally proved, and which might have imitators ; but Laud, 
four years a prisoner, aged, infirm, had only to answer for his 
co-operation in a tyranny, now four years since put an end 

* Whitelocke, 120. f lb. f Dec. 17, by 100 to 93 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 281 

to. As in the trial of Strafford, it was impossible to prove 
high treason against him by law. To condemn him, like 
Strafford, by a bill of attainder, the king's consent was neces- 
sary ; but theological hatred is as subtle as implacable. At 
the head of the prosecution was that same Prynne whom Laud 
had formerly caused to be so odiously mutilated, and who was 
now eager in his turn to humiliate and crush his enemy. Af- 
ter a long trial, in which the archbishop showed more talent 
and prudence than might have been expected, a simple ordi- 
nance of parliament, voted by seven lords only, and illegal, 
even according to the traditions of parliamentary tyranny, 
pronounced his condemnation. He died with pious courage, 
full of contempt for his adversaries, and of fear for the future 
fate of the king.* The other trials had the same result ; and 
in six weeks, the scaffold was erected five times on Tower- 
hill, f oftener than had occurred since the commencement of 
the revolution.:}: The measures of general government were 
directed in the same spirit. A week before Laud's execution 
(Jan. 3), the liturgy of the Anglican church, hitherto tole- 
rated, was definitively abolished ; and on the proposal of the 
assembly of divines, a book entitled " Directions for Public 
Worship " received in its stead the sanction of parliament. § 
The party leaders were quite aware that this innovation would 
meet with great opposition, and cared little for its success ; 
but to retain the power about to escape them, they needed all 
the support of the fanatical presbyterians, and refused them 
nothing. The independents, on their side, used every effort 
to get the upper house to adopt the decisive ordinance ; peti- 
tions recommenced, some of them even threatening, demand- 
ing that the lords and commons should sit together in one as- 

* According to the Journals of the House of Lords, twenty peers sat 
on the day on which Laud was condemned ; but probably several went 
out before the vote was taken ; for it is shown, by unquestionable docu- 
ments, that the majority who condemned him consisted only of the 
earls of Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury, Bolingbroke, and the lords North, 
Grey of Wark, and Bruce (Somers' Tracts, ii., 287). Lord Bruce after- 
wards denied that he had voted. 

t Sir Alexander Carew was executed Dec. 23, 1644 ; John Hotham, 
the younger, Jan. 1, 1645 ; Sir John Hotham, Jan. 2; Laud, Jan. 10 ; 
and lord Macguire, Feb. 20. 

t State Trials, iv., 315, &c. ; Pari. Hist, iii., 315, 320, 322. 

§ Neal, Hist, of the Puritans, iii., 127. 

24* 



282 HISTORY OF THE 



sembly.* A solemn fast was ordained (Dec. 18), in order to 
call down, upon so grave a deliberation, some light from the 
Lord ; the two houses only were present at the sermons 
preached that day in Westminster, doubtless to leave the 
preachers a fuller career, and Vane and Cromwell had taken 
care to select their men."}" At last, after repeated messages 
and conferences, the commons went in a body to the upper 
house to demand the adoption of the ordinance (Jan. 13),:]: 
but the lords had taken their resolution, and on the very day 
of this marked step, the ordinance was rejected. 

The victory seemed great and the moment propitious for 
making use of it. The negotiations at Uxbridge were draw- 
ing near. On the urgent entreaties of the fugitive members 
who had obscurely opened at Oxford their second session, 
Charles had at last consented (towards the end of December, 
1644) to give the name of parliament to the houses at West- 
minster : " If there had been in the council," he wrote to the 
queen, " but two persons of my mind, I would never have 
given way."§ He had at the same time named his commis- 
sioners,|l who were nearly all friends of peace ; and among 
the parliament commissioners,^ Vane, St. John, and Prideaux, 
alone entertained other views. On the 29th of January the 
negotiators arrived at Uxbridge, full of good intentions and 
hope. 

They met with mutual earnestness and courtesy. They 
had all long known each other ; many, before these sad dis- 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 5 ; Lingard, Hist, of England, x., 282. 

t Clarendon, ii., 845; Whitelocke, 119. 

i Pari. Hist., iii , 333—337 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 7 ; Whitelocke, 123. 

§ Memoirs of Ludlow. 

II The duke of Richmond, the marquis of Hertford, the earls of South- 
ampton, Kingston, and Chichester; the lords Capel, Seymour, Hatton, 
and Colepepper ; the secretai-y of state Nicholas, sir Edward Hyde, sir 
Edward Lane, sir Orlando Bridgeman, sir Thomas Gardiner, Mr. John 
Ashburton, Mr. Geoffrey Palmer, Dr. Stewart, and their suite, in all 
one hundred and eight persons. 

IT The earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Denbigh ; 
lord Wenman, Messrs. Denzil Holies, William Pierp.oint, Oliver St. 
John, Whitelocke, John Carew, Edmund Prideaux, and sir Harry 
Vane, for the English parliament ; the earl of Lowden, the marquis of 
Argyle, the lords Maitland and Balmerino, sir Archibald Johnston, sir 
Charles Erskine, sir John Smith, Messrs. George Dundas, Hugh Ken- 
nedy, Robert Berkley, and Alexander Henderson, for the Scottish par- 
liament, with their suite ; in all, one hundred and eight persons. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 283 

sensions, had been united by ties of friendship. On the very- 
evening of their arrival, Hyde, Colepepper, Pahxier, White- 
locke, Holies, Pierpoint, exchanged visits, congratulating each 
other on working together to procure peace for the country. 
More embarrassment and reserve, however, was observable 
in the commissioners from Westminster, who bore the yoke 
of rougher and more mistrustful masters. The negotiations 
were to last twenty days ; the subjects for special considera- 
tion were religion, the militia, and Ireland. It was agreed 
that each of these questions should be discussed for three 
days, taken as might be arranged, consecutively or alternately. 
So long as these preliminaries were the only business in hand, 
everything went on very smoothly ; there was entire confi- 
dence on both sides, perfect politeness. But when, at length, 
the real discussion began (Jan. 30), around the table at which 
the negotiators were seated, all the difficulties reappeared. 
Each of the parliamentary factions had its fundamental point, 
of which it would not bate a jot ; the presbyterians, the pri- 
vileged establishment of their church ; the politicians, the 
command of the militia ; the independents, liberty of con- 
science ; and the king, obliged to concede to all, only obtained 
from each such sacrifices as the others absolutely refused. 
Each party, moreover, kept constantly in view the question 
whether, peace being concluded, power would be in its hands, 
for neither would treat except on this condition. The subject 
of religion being taken first, the discussion soon assumed the 
character of a theological controversy ; they argued, instead 
of negotiating ; they were more anxious to make out a case 
than to make peace. By degrees, acrimony pervaded the in- 
tercourse late so amicable ; it even made its way into those 
private conversations in which some of the negotiators at times 
sought to remove the obstacles which impeded their public 
discussions. Among the commissioners from Oxford, Hyde, 
more especially, was courted by those of Westminster, who 
knew him to be a man of superior judgment, and in great 
credit with the king. Lord Lowden, chancellor of Scotland, 
and the earls of Pembroke and Denbigh, had long and frank 
interviews with him on the dangers of the future, on the sinis- 
ter designs which were fermenting in parliament, on the neces- 
sity that the king should give up a great deal to save the whole. 
Hyde readily entered into these communications ; but the sus- 



284 HISTORY OF THE 



ceptibility of his self-love, the unbending haughtiness of his 
intellect, his dry and sarcastic tone, his scornful honesty, nearly 
always offended and repelled those who sought his society. 
The least incident revealed all these perplexities, all the fu- 
tility of the peaceful wishes of the negotiators. On a market 
day, in the church of Uxbridge, a man of the name of Love, 
a fanatic preacher from London, inveighed, in the presence of 
a large congregation, against the royalists and the treaty, with 
the. most outrageous virulence. " No good can come of it," 
said he ; " those people are here from Oxford with hearts full 
of blood ; they only want to amuse the people till they can do 
them some notable injury ; this treaty is as far from peace as 
heaven from hell." The king's commissioners required that 
the man should be punished for his insolence, but the parlia- 
mentarians dared do no more than send him from Uxbridge.* 
Unfavorable reports circulated as to the king's real intentions ; 
it vi^as said that though he had yielded so far to the wishes of 
his council he had no wish for peace, had promised the queen 
to conclude nothing without her consent, and was far more 
intent upon fomenting the internal dissensions of parliament, 
than on coming to a genuine understanding with it. He was 
even suspected of being secretly in treaty with the papists of 
Ireland to raise an army among them ; and the most solemn 
protestations of his commissioners did not succeed in dispel- 
ling the distrust of the city on this subject. 

Meanwhile the assigned period for terminating the negoti- 
ations approached, and the parliament showed very little in- 
clination to prolong them. Desperate at seeing the negotia- 
tors about to separate without result, the friends of peace, 
towards the middle of February, concerted a final effort. It 
seemed to them that some concession on the part of the king 
with reference to the militia, the offer, for instance, of giving 
up the command of it for some years to leaders, half of whom 
should be named by parliament, would not be without its 
effect. Lord Southampton proceeded in all haste to Oxford 
to obtain this concession fi'om the king. Charles at first re- 
fused ; the earl entreated ; other noblemen joined him, on 
their knees, in supplicating the king, for the sake of his crown 
and his people, not to reject this chance of favorable negotia- 

* Clarendon, ii., 267; Rushworth, ii , 3, 848 ; Whitelocke, 127. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 285 

tion. Charles at last yielded ; and the desire for peace was 
so fervent in the minds of his councillors, that in their joy at 
this success, all difficulties seemed well nigh at an end. 
Fairfax and Cromwell were among those to whom the king 
was himself to propose that the command of the militia should 
be entrusted. At supper, gaiety-reigned round the royal ta- 
ble. The king complained that his wine was not good ; "I 
hope," said one of the company, laughingly, " that, in a few 
days, your majesty will drink better at Guildhall with the 
lord mayor." Next morning, lord Southampton, about to 
x'eturn to [Jxbridge, waited on the king to receive, in writing, 
the instructions agreed upon ; but to his extreme astonish- 
ment, Charles withdrew his promise, and definitively refused 
the concession.* 

A letter from Montrose, received during the night from the 
other end of Scotland, with a rapidity almost unexampled, had 
induced this sudden change. A fortnight before, at Inver- 
lochy, in Argyleshire, Montrose had gained a brilliant victory 
over the Scottish troop commanded by Argyle himself (Feb. 
2).'|- After giving an account of it to the king, he went on to 
express' his utter aversion to all treaties with the rebel parlia- 
ment in England. " Greatly," he wrote — " greatly as the 
success of your majesty's arms in Scotland had exhilarated 
my heart, this news from England has more than counterba- 
lanced that joy. The last time I had the honor of seeing 
your majesty, I fully explained to you what I know so well to 
be the designs of your rebellious subjects in both kingdoms ; 
and your majesty may, perhaps, remember how much you 
were then convinced that I was in the right. I am sure that 
since then nothing could have happened which can have 
changed your majesty's opinion on the subject. The more 
you grant, the more will be demanded of you ; and I have 
but too many reasons to be certain that they will not be con- 
tent till they have rendered your majesty a mere king of 
straw. Pardon me, then, august and sacred sovereign, if I 
venture to say that, in my humble opinion, it is unworthy of 
a king to treat with rebel subjects while they retain the sword 
in hand. God forbid that I should seek to repress the mercy 

* Wellwood's Memoirs (1718), 62 ; Banks, A Critical Review of the 
Life of Oliver Cromwell (1769), lOS. 
fWhitelocke, 133. 



286 HISTORY OF THE 



of your majesty ! but I shudder with horror when I think of a 
treaty being in hand wliile your majesty and those people are 
in the field, with two armies. Permit me, in all humility, to 
assure your majesty that, with the blessing of God, I am in 
the right way to make this kingdom submit again to your 
power ; and if the measures I have concerted with your other 
faithful subjects do not fail, which is hai-dly to be supposed, 
before the end of this summer, I shall be in a position to come 
to the assistance of your majesty, with a gallant army ; and, 
sustained by the justice of your cause, you will inflict on these 
rebels, in England and in Scotland, the just chastisement of 
their rebellion. When I have submitted this kingdom to your 
power, and have conquered from Dan to Beer-sheba, as I 
doubt not I shall very quickly, I hope I may have then to say, 
as David's general said to his master : ' Cojue thou, let this 
country be called by my name /' for in all my actions I have 
nothing in view but the glory and interest of your majesty."* 
This letter had restored to the king his utmost hopes ; though 
less confident, lord Southannpton did not insist ; and he brought 
the refusal to Uxbridge, without explaining the cause of it. 
The conferences were broken off, and the presbyterian chiefs 
returned to Westminster, almost broken-hearted at a discom- 
fiture, which threw them back once more into all the dangers 
of their situation. f 

In their absence, that situation had grown still more perilous. 
Compelled to abandon, for awhile at least, the self-denying 
ordinance, the independents had directed their most ardent 
efforts to the measure which was to accompany it, the reorgani- 
zation of the army. In a few days, everything had been pre- 
pared, concerted, settled ; the plan, the form, the expense, the 
means of providing for it.ij: Only one army was for the future 
to be kept on foot, composed of twenty-one thousand men, and 
commanded by one general, who was even to be invested with 
the right of naming all the officers, subject to the approbation 
of parliament. This general was Fairfax. For a long time 
past, his distinguished valor, the frankness of his character, 
the success of his expeditions, the warlike enthusiasm with 
which his presence inspired the troops, had fixed public atten- 

* Wellwood, ut sup. ] Whitelocke, 134. 

f The new army was to cost 56,135Z. a mouth ; to be raised in nine- 
teen counties ; Rushworth, i., 4, 8 — 13. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 287 

tion upon him ; and Cromwell had answered, publicly in the 
house, privately to his party, for the fitness of this choice. 
Essex retained his rank, Waller and Manchester their com- 
missions, but without even a shadow of power. On the 28th 
of January, the ordinance which was to regulate the execu- 
tion of this measure was sent to the lords. They endeavored 
at least to retard its adoption, by proposing various amend- 
ments, and protracting the debate on each. But in this in- 
stance resistance was difficult, for the ordinance had the sanc- 
tion of the people, who were convinced that the multiplicity 
of armies and their chiefs was the true cause of the prolonga- 
tion and inefficacy of the war. Strong in this support, the 
commons urged the measure forward ; the lords at last yielded 
(Feb. 15) ; and on the 19th of February, two days before the 
rupture of the negotiations at Uxbridge, Fairfax, introduced 
into the house, received with a simple and modest air, stand- 
ing by the chair which had been prepared for him, the official 
compliments of the speaker.* 

On their return to Westminster, the presbyterian leaders 
endeavored to redeem this defeat. The upper house com- 
plained bitterly of the injurious and even threatening language 
which had been lately used in reference to them, and of the 
report everywhere in circulation that the commons meditated 
the abolition of the peerage. The commons answered by a 
solemn declaration of their profound respect for the rights of 
the lords and their firm resolution to uphold them (March 24). f 
The Scottish commissioners addressed to both houses (March 
3), in the name of the covenant, a remonstrance at once sharp 
and timid.:}: The commons, without noticing it, transmitted to 
the lords another ordinance, still further enlarging Fairfax's 
powers, and striking out from his commission the injunction 
hitherto repeated in all similar documents, " to watch over the 
safety of the king's person." The lords voted that it should 
be restored; the commons refused (March 29): "this phrase," 
they said, " would dishearten their soldiers, and encourage the 
king to adventure his person to come at the head of his army 
into any danger." The lords insisted, and in three successive 
debates, notwithstanding the active eiforts of the commons, the 

*Whitelocke, 131; Pari. Hist., iii., 340; Rushworth, i., 3, 7; 
Holies, 34. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 348. J lb., 346. 



288 HISTORY OF THE 



votes were equally divided in the upper house on this ques- 
tion.* Everything remained in suspense : the commons de- 
clared that, for their part, having now done everything in their 
power, if the delay caused any misfortune, the lords alone 
must answer for it to the country (March 31). -j" The latter 
began to grow weary of a resistance of which they foresaw 
not only the futility, but the approaching end. While this was 
going on, the marquis of Argyle arrived from Scotland : a 
presbyterian in religion, he inclined in politics to the bolder 
class of thinkers ; and the independents, Vane and Cromwell 
in particular, soon contracted an intimacy with him. Argyle, 
besides, had recent injuries to avenge : a man of supple and 
profound intellect, with great activity of mind, but firmer in 
the council than in the field, he had gone no nearer the battle, 
in which the Scots were defeated at Inverlochy by Montrose, 
than the middle of the lake, and had taken to flight the instant 
he saw his soldiers disperse.:}: From that day, both in England 
and in Scotland, the cavaliers never mentioned his name with- 
out insult, and their complete fall could alone satisfy his ven- 
geance. He employed his influence to dissuade the Scottish 
commissioners and some of the presbyterian leaders from fur- 
ther opposition, not only to the reorganization of the army, but 
to the self-denying ordinance itself; an opposition, he said, 
ft'om which everything sufliered, and which sooner or later the 
necessity of the case must inevitably overcome. § Essex saw 
the resolution of his friends daily more and more wavering. 
Determined to anticipate their weakness, he announced that he 
would resign his commission ; and on the 1st of April, rising 
in his place in the upper house, with a paper in his hand, to 
which he constantly referred, for he was altogether unskilled 
in the art of speaking, he said : ", My lords, having received 
this great charge in obedience to the commands of both houses, 
and taken their sword into my hand, I can with confidence say 
that I have for these now almost three years, faithfully served 
you, and I hope, without loss of honor to myself or prejudice to 
the public. I see, by the now coming up of these ordinances, 
that it is the desire of the house of commons that my commis- 
sion may be vacated ; and it hath been no particular respect tQ 



* Pari. Hist., iii., 350. f lb. 

t Malcolm Laing, Hist, of Scotland, &c., iii., 294. 

§ Clarendon, ii., 910. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 289 

myself (whatever is whispered to the contrary) that hath made 
me thus long omit to declare my readiness thereto, it being not 
unknown to divers men of honor that I had resolved it after 
the action of Gloucester, but that some importunities (pressed 
on me with arguments of public advantage, and that by those 
of unquestionable affection) overruled me therein. I now do 
it, and return my commission into those hands that gave it me ; 
wishing it may prove as good an expedient to the present dis- 
tempers as some will have it believed. I think it not immo- 
dest, that I entreat both houses that those officers of mine which 
are now laid by, might have their debentures audited, some 
considerable part of their arrears paid them for their support, 
and the remainder secured them by the public faith. My 
lords, I know that jealousies cannot be avoided in the unhappy 
condition of our present affairs, yet wisdom and chai'ity should 
put such restraint thereto, as not to allow it to become destruc- 
tive. I hope that this advice from me is not unseasonable, 
wishing myself and friends may, among others, participate the 
benefit thereof; this proceeding from my affection to the par. 
liament, the prosperity whereof I shall ever wish from my 
heart, what return soever it bring myself — I being no single 
example, in that kind, of that fortune I now undergo."* 

This speech seemed to the upper house quite a providential 
deliverance. They hastened to inform the commons that they 
adopted the ordinance for the reorganization of the army, with- 
out amendment (April 3). At the same time the earls of Den- 
bigh and Manchester also gave in their resignation. The 
house voted them, for this patriotic sacrifice, thanks and pro- 
mises, which the commons fully sanctioned. The next day, 
a self-denying ordinance, somewhat differing from the first, but 
tending to just the same results, passed without obstacle in the 
upper house ;f and men congratulated themselves on seeing at 
last terminated a contest which had caused them so much 
anxiety. 

*Parl. Hist, iii., 352. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 353-355. See the self-denying ordinance, in the 
Parliamentary History, iii., 355. 



25 



290 HISTORY OF THE 



BOOK THE SIXTH. 

1645—1646. 

Formation of the army of the independents — Cromwell retains his 
command — Campaign of 1645 — Alarms of parliament — Battle of 
Naseby — The parliament seizes and publishes the king's private cor- 
respondence —-Decline of the royalist party in the west — Flight and 
anxiety of the Iting — Montrose's victory in Scotland — The king 
attempts to join him, but without success — Defeat of Montrose — The 
king's stay at Newark — He returns to Oxford and seeks to renew ne- 
gotiations with the parliament — The parliament rejects the overture 
— New elections — The king treats with the insurgent Irish — The 
treaty discovered — Defeat of the last royalist troops — The king es- 
capes from Oxford and seeks refuge in the Scottish camp. 

No sooner had Essex and Manchester given in their resigna- 
tion, than Fairfax quitted London (April 3), and fixing his 
head-quarters at Windsor, set himself assiduously to work to 
form, out of their two ai'mies, the new force he was to com- 
mand. It had been predicted that this process would meet 
with violent resistance ; and Cromwell, to whom as well as to 
Essex and Manchester, the self-denying ordinance extended, 
had repelled all such fears, protesting, that as far as he was 
concerned, " his soldiers had been taught to march or remain, 
to fight or to lay down their arms, according to the commands 
of parliament." Some seditions, however, broke out, particu- 
larly at Reading, where there were five regiments of Essex's 
infantry, and in Hertfordshire, where eight squadrons of his 
cavalry were quartered, under the command of colonel Dal- 
bier. The presence of Skippon, who had been named major- 
general of the new army, and his rough but effective eloquence, 
sufficed to appease the regiments at Reading (April 6). Those 
of Dalbier were not so readily tranquillized ; it was even re- 
ported in London that they were about to join the king at Ox- 
ford ; and St. John, ever violent and disposed to seventy, wrote 
to the leaders in Hertfordshire, to fall suddenly, and sword in 
hand, on the factious, But through the influence of some of 
the cashiered officers and of Essex himself, Dalbier at last 
submitted, and proceeded to head-quarters. In truth, the dis- 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 291 

content among the soldiers was of no very marked character, 
and they resigned themselves without difficulty to their new 
leaders. The parliament gave them a fortnight's pay, and 
ordered that the confiscated estates of some of the delinquents 
should be sold to satisfy the most pressing demands. Crom- 
well's soldiers also mutinied, notwithstanding his guarantee to 
the contrary, declaring they would serve under no other leader ; 
and Cromwell alone had power enough over them to make 
them return to their duty. At the first intimation of their in- 
subordination, he set off" to render, as he said, this last service 
to parliament before he quitted his command. Towards the 
20th of April, the work was almost accomplished ; all the new 
corps were organized without difficulty ; in London alone, the 
excitement was prolonged by the crowds of cashiered officers 
whoall flocked thither, either to solicit the payment of their 
arrears, or to watch the progress of events.* 

At Oxford the king and court were full of hope. After the 
rupture of the negotiations at Uxbridge, and notwithstanding 
the brilliant news from Scotland, Charles had felt some unea- 
siness. Though by no means eager for peace, it was his 
interest that the pacific party should predominate at West- 
minster, and their defeat alarmed him for the moment. He 
resolved to separate from his son Charles, prince of Wales, 
who was now approaching his fifteenth year, and to send him, 
with the title of generalissimo, into the western counties, both 
to give to those faithful districts a chief capable still of ani- 
mating their devotion, and to divide the perils which might 
threaten royalty. Hyde, and lords Capel and Colepepper, were 
ordered to accompany the prince and direct everything in his 
name. Such was, at this period, the despondency of the king's 
thoughts, that he conversed several times with Hyde on what 
would happen if he himself were to fall into the hands of the 
rebels, and indirectly sounded him, by means of lord Digby, 
as to whether in case of need and without orders, and even 
contrary to ostensible orders, he would decide to take the prince 
out of England, and convey him to the continent. " Such 
questions," answered Hyde, " cannot be resolved until the 
time of need ;" and on the 4th of March the prince and his 
councillors took leave of the king, whom they never saw 

* Holies, Memoirs, 31, et passim; Rushworth, i., 4, 17. 



292 HISTOEY OF THE 



again.* But a month after, when it was known at Oxford 
what obstacles impeded the reorganization of the parliamentary 
army, when the regiments were seen in insurrection, and the 
most illustrious officers put aside, confidence and gaiety reap- 
peared among the cavaliers. Soon they only spoke with de- 
rision of this mob of peasants and preaching mechanics, idiots 
enough to drive from them generals whose names and ability 
had constituted their sole strength, and to raise to the command 
officers as obscure, as utter novices as their soldiers. Songs, 
jests, puns, were daily sent forth against the parliament and 
its defenders ; and the king, in spite of his grave tempera- 
ment, allowed himself to be persuaded by these convenient 
arguments. He had, besides, secret hopes, arising from in- 
trigues of which even his most intimate confidants were 
ignorant. 

Towards the end of April, Fairfax announced that in a few 
days he should open the campaign. Cromwell went to Wind- 
sor, to kiss, as he said, the general's hand, and take him his 
resignation. On seeing him enter the room, Fairfax said, 
" I have just received from the committee of the two kingdoms 
an order which has reference to you ; it directs you to proceed 
directly with some horse, to the road between Oxford and Wor- 
cester, to intercept communications between prince Rupert and 
the king."f The same evening Cromwell departed on his mis- 
sion, and in five days, before any other corps of the new army 
had put itself in motion, he had beaten the royalists in three 
encounters (April 24, at Islip-bridge ; 26, at Witney ; 27, at 
Bampton Bush), taken Bletchington (April 24), and sent to 
the house a full report of his success. :}: " Who will bring me 
this Cromwell, dead or alive ! "§. cried the king ; while in 
London all were rejoicing that he had not yet given in his 
resignation. 

A week had scarcely passed, and the parliament had already 
made up its mind that he should not resign. The campaign 
had commenced (April 30). The king, quitting Oxford (May 
7), had rejoined prince Rupert, and was proceeding towards 
the north, either to raise the siege of Chester, or to give battle 

* Clarendon, Mem., i., 230. 

t Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva (London, 1G47), 10; Rushworth, i., 4, 23. 

i Pari. Hist, iii., 359 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 24. 

§ Bank's Critical Review, &c., 23. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION, 293 

to the Scottish army, and regain on that side his former advan- 
tages ; if he succeeded, he would be in a position to threaten, 
as he pleased, the east or the south ; and Fairfax, then on his 
way to the west, to deliver the important town of Taunton, 
closely invested by the prince of Wales, could not oppose his 
progress. Fairfax was recalled (May 5) ; but, meantime, 
Cromwell alonw was in a condition to watch the king's move- 
ments. Notwithstanding the ordinance, he received orders to 
continue his service forty days (May 10.)* Sir William 
Brereton, sir Thomas Middleton, and sir John Price, distin- 
guished officers, and members of the commons, received simi- 
lar orders,^ either from similar motives, or that Cromwell 
might not seem the only exception. 

Fairfax hastened his return ; the king had continued his 
march towards the north ; in London, without its being alto- 
gether known why, the alarm was somewhat appeased ; no 
royalist army any longer covered Oxford, the focus of war in 
the centre of the kingdom ; the parliament believed it had as- 
sured friends in the place ; Fairfax received orders to invest 
it (May 17).:}: If he took it, it would be an immense success; 
if the siege was prolonged, he could proceed thence without 
obstacle, to any point which the king might threaten. Crom- 
well joined him before Oxford. 

They had scarcely met when alarm once more spread 
throughout London, more intense than ever. Every day un- 
favorable news came from the north ; the Scottish army, instead 
of marching to meet the king and give him battle, had fallen 
back towards the border ; from necessity, according to some, 
in order to be in a position to oppose the growing progress of 
Montrose in that kingdom ; from ill humor, according to others, 
because parliament had refused to submit to the yoke of pres- 
byterians and strangers. § However this may have been, fa- 
vored by their retreat, the king had only to approach the walls 
of Chester to raise the siege ; and, easy as to this place, his 
medium of communication with Ireland, he directed his march 
towards the confederate counties of the east, hitherto the bul- 
wark of parliament. At all hazards, it was essential to secure 

* Pari Hist., iii., 361 ; Whitelocke, 145. f Whitelocke, 146. 

f The siege began on the 22d; Rushworth, i., 4, 33 ; Pari. Hist, 
iii , 364 ; Journals, Lords. 

§ Old Pari. Hist., xiii., 474—488. 
25* 



294 HISTOEY OF THE 



them from this invasion. No one could effect this object so 
well as Cromwell, for in that quarter, more especially, his in- 
fluence prevailed ; there had commenced his military levies, 
his military triumphs. He received orders to move directly 
upon Cambridge, and take in hand the defence of the con- 
federation.* 

A more pressing danger soon occasioned his recal. A week 
after his departure came the news that the king had taken the 
rich town of Leicester by storm (June 1, 1645), and that, in 
the west, Taunton, of late relieved by a detachment of Fair- 
fax's army, was again closely besieged. f Utter consternation 
prevailed ; the presbyterians triumphed : " There," said they, 
*' is the fruit of your boasted re-organization ! since it has been 
effected, what has been seen ? Vague speculation and defeats. 
The king takes one of our best places in a day, while your 
general remains motionless before Oxford, doubtless waiting 
for the women of the court to get frightened, and open the 
gates to him.:]: The only answer to this was a petition from 
the common council, presented to the upper house, § on the 5th 
of June, in which all the mischief was attributed to the inac- 
tivity of the Scots, to the delays which still impeded the recruit- 
ing of the army, to the pretension kept up by parliament to 
regulate at a distance the operations of the war ; the petitioners 
demanded that more discretion should be given to the general, 
a more decisive intimation to the Scots, to Cromwell his former 
command. At the same time, Fairfax received ordei's (June 
5) to leave the siege of Oxford, to go in search of the king, 
and fight at any rate. Before he set out he sent to parliament 
an application, signed by himself and sixteen colonels, for 
Cromwell to join him, an officer, he said, indispensably needed 
to command the cavalry. || The lords deferred their answer, 
but the authorization of the commons was prompt, and accepted 
as sufficient. Fairfax immediately sent word to Cromwell 
(June 11) ;1[ all the regiments hastened their march ; and on 
the 12th of June, a little to the west of Northampton, some of 
the parliamentary cavalry, sent to reconnoitre, unexpectedly 
came upon a detachment of the king's army. 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 35 ; May, A Breviary of the History of the Par- 
liament (1655), 126 ; Holies, 35. 

t Whitelocke, 149. J Clarendon, ii., 980. § Pari. Hist, iii., 365. 
II Pari. Hist, iii., 368. If Rushworth, i., 4, 39. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTtON. 295 

He was far from expecting their approach ; informed of 
the blockade of Oxford, and yielding to the fears of the be- 
sieged court, who entreated him to return,* he had given up 
his expedition into the northern and eastern counties, and 
marched to relieve his head-quarters. But his confidence 
was not shaken ; on the contrary, another victoiy by Mon- 
trose had just still more highly elated his spirits. f " Never, 
since the beginning of the rebellion," he wrote to the queen, 
" have my affairs been in so good a position" (June 9)4 He 
accordingly continued his march leisurely, stopping in such 
places as pleased his eye, spending whole days in hunting, and 
permitting to his cavaliers, who were still more confident 
than he, as much liberty as himself.§ On the first intimation 
of the near approach of the parliamentary army, he fell back 
towards Leicester, to rally his troops, and await those which 
were to reach him shortly from Wales or from the western 
counties. The next day (June 13), at supper time, his con- 
fidence was still unimpaired, and he had no thought of giving 
battle. 11 But he was informed that some of the parliamenta- 
rian squadrons were harassing his rear-guard. Ci'omwell had 
been with the army for several hours. H A council of war 
was immediately called ; and towards midnight, notwithstand- 
ing the opposition of several officers, who entreated that the 
reinforcements should be waited for, prince Rupert caused it 
to be decided that they should instantly turn and advance upon 
the enemy. 

The meeting took place the next morning (June 14), at 
Naseby, to the north-west of Northampton. At dawn of day 
the king's army formed on a slight eminence, in an advanta- 
geous position. The scouts, sent to reconnoitre the parlia- 
mentary army, returned in two hours, and reported that they 
saw nothing of it. Rupert, losing patience, went himself on 
the look-out, with a few squadrons ; it was agreed that the 
army should remain stationary till he returned. He had 
scarcely gone a mile and a half before the advanced guard 

* Memoirs of James II. 

t Gained at Auldearn, in the county of Nairn, in the north of Scot- 
land, the 4th of May, 1645. 

X Ludlow, Mem. § Rushworth, i., 4, 40 ; Clarendon, ii., 9S5. 

II Evelyn, Memoirs, ii., App. 97, in a letter from the king to the 
socretary of state, Nicholas, dated the 13th of June. 

IT Rushworth, i., 4, 41 ; May, Breviary, 127. 



296 HISTORY OF THE 



of the enemy appeared, in full march towards the cavaliers. 
In his excitement, the prince imagined they were retreating, 
and pushed on, sending word to the king to come and join 
him with all speed, lest the enemy should escape. Towards 
ten o'clock the royalist army came up, somewhat disordered 
by the precipitation of their advance ; and Rupert, at the 
head of the right wing of the cavalry, immediately dashed 
down upon the left wing of the parliamentarians, commanded 
by Ireton, who soon after became Cromwell's son-in-law (Jan. 
15, 1647). Nearly at the same moment, Cromwell, whose 
squadrons occupied the right wing, attacked the left wing of 
the king, composed of the cavaliers of the northern counties, 
under the command of sir Marmaduke Langdale ; and imme- 
diately after, the two bodies of infantry, posted in the centre 
— the' one under Fairfax and Skippon, the other commanded 
by the king in person, also came to action. No battle as yet 
had been so rapidly general or so fiercely contested. The 
two armies were nearly of equal strength ; the royalists, in- 
toxicated with insolent confidence, sent forth as their war-cry 
Queen Mary; the parliamentarians, firm in their faith, 
marched forward singing, God is with us ! Prince Rupert 
made his first attack with his accustomed success ; after a 
warm conflict, Ireton's squadrons were broken ; Ireton him- 
self, wounded in the shoulder, and his thigh pierced by a 
pike, fell for awhile into the hands of the cavaliers. But 
while Rupert, always carried away by the same fault, pursued 
the enemy up to the baggage, well defended by artillery, and 
lost time in attacking that post in the hope of booty, Cromwell, 
on his side, master of himself and of his men as at Marston 
Moor, drove in Langdale's squadrons, and leaving two of his 
officers to prevent their rallying, hastened back to the field 
of battle, where the infantry were engaged. The conflict 
was here more violent and deadly than anywhere else. The 
parliamentarians, charged by the king in person, had been at 
first thrown into great disorder ; Skippon was severely 
wounded ; Fairfax urged him to retire ; " No," said he, " as 
long as one man will stand, I wont stir ;" and he ordered his 
reserve to advance. A blow from a sword beat off" Fairfax's 
helmet ; Charles Doyley, the colonel of his guards, seeing 
him ride about the field bareheaded, offered him his. " It is 
well enough, Charles," said Fairfax, and refused it. Then 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 297 

pointing out to him a division of the royal infantry, which had 
as yet resisted every assault, " Can't those people be got at," 
said he ; " have you charged them ?" — " Twice, general, but 
I could not break them." — " Well, take them in front, I will 
take them in the rear, and we will meet in the middle ;" and 
they did, indeed, meet in the midst of the dispersed ranks. 
Fairfax killed with his own hand the ensign, and delivered 
the colors into the hands of one of his men ; the latter boasted 
of this as an exploit of his own : Doyley, who overheard the 
man, grew angry : " I have honor enough," said Fairfax, who 
happened to pass at the time ; " let him take that to himself." 
The royalists were, in their turn, giving way in every di- 
rection, when Cromwell returned with his victorious squadrons. 
Desperate at this sight, Charles put himself at the head of his 
regiment of life-guards, the only one he had left in reserve, 
to attack this new enemy. The order was already given and 
the troops in motion, when the earl of Carnewarth, a Scotch- 
man, who was galloping by the side of the king, suddenly 
caught hold of his bridle, and exclaiming, with an oath, " Do 
you want to get killed ?" turned him suddenly to the right. 
The cavaliers who were nearest the king tui'ned also, without 
understanding why ; the others followed, and in an instant 
the whole regiment had their backs to the enemy. The sur- 
prise of the army became terror ; all dispersed over the plain, 
some to escape, others to stay the fugitives. Charles, amidst 
a group of officers, in vain cried — " Stop ! stop !" The dis- 
persion went on unchecked, till prince Rupert returned to the 
field of battle with his squadrons. A numerous body then 
formed round the king, but disordered, weary, perplexed, de- 
spondent. Charles, sword in hand, his eyes glaring, despair 
in every feature, twice dashed forward, vehemently exclaim- 
ing, " Gentlemen, one charge more, and we recover the day." 
But no one followed him ; the infantry, broken in every di- 
rection, were in full flight, or already prisoners ; retreat was 
the only course left open ; and the king, with about two 
thousand horse, galloped off in the direction of Leicester, 
leaving his artillery, ammunition, baggage, more than one 
hundred flags, his own standard, five thousand men, and all 
his cabinet papers in the possession of parliament.* 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 42-44; Clarendon, ii., 985, &c. ; Whitelocke, 
151 ; May, Breviary, 128. 



298 HISTORY OF THE 



This victory surpassed the most daring hopes. Fairfax 
hastened to inform the parliament of it in a calm, simple tone, 
without any political allusion or advice. Cromwell wrote 
also, but only to the commons, as holding his commission from 
them alone ; his letter concluded with these woi-ds : " This is 
none other but the hand of God, and to him alone belongs 
the glory, wherein none are to share with him. The general 
served you with all faithfulness and honor ; and the best 
commendation I can give him is, that I dare say he attributes 
all to God, and would rather perish than assume to himself, 
which is an honest and a thriving way ; and yet as much for 
bravery may be given him in this action as to a man. Honest 
men" (by these he meant the fanatical independents) " served 
you faithfully in this action, sir • they are trusty ; I beseech 
you, in the name of God, not to discourage them. I wish 
this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that 
are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty 
of' his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his con- 
science, and you for the liberty he fights for."* 

Some were offended at seeing a subordinate officer, a ser- 
vant of parliament, as they said, distribute advice and praise 
in such a tone ; but their displeasure had little effect amidst 
the public exultation ; and the day on which Cromwell's letter 
reached London, the lords themselves voted that his command 
should be extended to three months longer (June IB)."}" 

They voted, at the same time, that advantage ought to be 
taken of this victory to address to the king reasonable pro- 
posals (June 20),:]: and the Scottish commissioners expressed 
the same feeling (July 28). § But the conquerors were very 
far from any such idea. Instead of answering, the commons 
requested (June 30) that the whole body of citizens should 
be invited to assemble at Guildhall to hear read the papers 
found among the king's baggage, particularly his letters to 
the queen, that they might judge for themselves what trust 
could thenceforward be placed in negotiation. Fairfax had 
hesitated to open these papers, but Cromwell and Ireton had 
combated his scruples, and the house had not shared them. 
The reading took place (July 3) in the midst of an immense 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 45, 46. 

t Pari. Hist, ill., 374. t lb., 389. § lb., 375. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 299 

concourse of people,* and had a prodigious effect. It was 
clear that the king had never desired peace ; that in his eyes 
no concession was definitive, no promise obligatory ; that, in 
reality, he relied only on force, and still aimed at absolute 
power ; finally that, despite protestations a thousand times re- 
peated, he was negotiating with the king of France, the duke 
of Lorraine, with all the princes of the continent, to have 
foreign soldiers sent into England for his purposes. Even 
the name of parliament, which just before, to obtain the con- 
ference at Uxbridge, he had seemed to give the houses at 
Westminster, was but a deception on his part, for, in giving 
it, he had privately protested against his official proceeding, 
and caused his protest to be inscribed on the minutes of the 
council at Oxford. f Every citizen was allowed to convince 
himself, with his own eyes, that these letters were really in 
the king's own handwriting ;:}: and after the meeting at Guild- 
hall, the parliament had them published. § 

Anger became universal ; the friends of peace were reduced 
to silence. Some attempted, but in vain, to prevent this pub- 
lication, a gross violation, they said, of domestic secrets. 
They asked how far their authenticity could be relied on, 
whether it was not probable that several had been mutilated 
and others altogether omitted ;|j they insinuated that in par- 
liament, also, there were certain men who had negotiated 
with no greater sincerity, and were equally determined 
against peace ; but no explanation, no excuse is received by a 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 377 ; May, Breviary, 129. 

t Letters from the king to the queen, of the 2d and 9th of January, 
15th and 19th of February ; 5th, 13th, and 30th of March ; Ludlow's 
Mem. ; Evelyn's Mem., App., ii., 90; App., xiii. 

I May, ut sup. 

§ Under the title of " The King's Cabinet opened, or certain packets 
of secret letters and papers, written by the king's hand, and taken 
from his portfolio on the field of battle of Naseby, the 14th of June, 
1645, by the victorious sir Thomas Fairfax, in which are revealed 
many mysteries of state, which fully justify the cause for which sir 
Thomas Fairfax gave battle on that memorable day ; with notes." 

II The king never denied the authenticity of these letters ; he even ex- 
pressly acknowledges it in a letter written to sir Edward Nicholas, on the 
4th of August, 1645, which was a few weeks after the publication (sir 
John Evelyn's Memoirs, Appendix, ii., 101); and the text published 
by parliament is exactly the same as that inserted in the " Works of 
Charles I." published in London, 1660. 



300 HISTOEY OF THE 



people when it has once discovered that an attempt has been 
made to deceive it. Besides, admitting all this, the king's 
bad faith remained evident, and, to secure peace, it was at 
him they must look. War alone was now spoken of; the 
levies of troops were hurried on, taxes energetically collected, 
the estates of delinquents sold, all the troops received their 
pay, all the more important towns were thoroughly supplied 
with ammunition.* The Scots, at last, consented to advance 
into the interior of the kingdom (July 2) ;■]■ and Fairfax, find- 
ing no longer even fugitives to pursue, had resumed his march 
(June 20), for the purpose of carrying out in the western 
counties the object which the siege of Oxford had obliged him 
to suspend. 

Everything was changed in these counties, hitherto the 
bulwark of the royal cause ; not that the opinion of the peo- 
ple had becoine more favorable to parliament, but that it was 
alienated from the king. He still, indeed, possessed there 
several regiments, and almost all the towns ; but the war was 
no longer carried on there as in the outset, by steady, re- 
spected, popular men — ^the marquis of Hertford, sir Bevil 
Greenville, lord Hopton, Trevannion, Slanning, disinterested 
friends of the crown : some of these were dead, others dis- 
gusted, estranged by court intrigues, and sacrificed by the 
king's weakness. In their stead, two intriguers, lord Goring 
and sir Richard Greenville, commanded there — one the most 
debauched, the other the most rapacious of the cavaliers ; no 
principle, no affection attached them to the royal cause, but 
by making war in its name, they obtained the opportunity of 
gratifying their own passions, of oppressing their enemies, 
of revenging, enjoying, enriching themselves. Goring was 
brave, beloved by his men, and not deficient either in skill 
or energy on the field of battle ; but nothing could equal his 
recklessness and the insolent intemperance of his conduct and 
even his language. Nor was his loyalty to be relied upon ; he 
had already betrayed, first the king,:}: then the parliament,^ 
and seemed always on the point of some new treason. || Sir 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 377. t Id., ib. 

X In 1641, at the time the army first conspired against the parliament 

§ In August, 1642, at the beginning of the civil war, by giving up 
Portsmouth to the king, of which place parliament had appointed him 
the governor. 

II Clarendon, ii,, jaassim. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 301 

Richard Greenville, less disorderly and more influential with 
the nobility of the country, was stern and insatiable, and his 
courage, if not dubious, at all events not very eager. He 
passed his time in levying contributions for troops which he 
did not collect, or for expeditions which he did not even take 
the trouble to begin. The army was changed as well as its 
leaders ; it was no longer a party risen in defence of its affec- 
tions and its interests — frivolous, indeed, but sincere, licentious 
but devoted ; it was a rabble of vagabonds, utterly indifferent 
to the cause, committing day and night the most intolerable 
excesses, and disgusting, by their vices, a country ruined by 
their extortions. The prince of Wales, or rather his council, 
reduced to make use of such men, wore themselves out in 
fruitless efforts by turns to satisfy or to control them ; some- 
times to protect the people against them, at others to induce 
the people to take their place.* 

The people, however, no longer responded to the appeal ; 
they ere long went further. Thousands of peasants met, and, 
under the name of" clubmen," went in arms about the coun- 
try. They had no party views ; they did not declare for the 
parliament ; all they wished was, to keep the ravages of war 
from their villages and fields, and they set upon whomsoever 
they had reason to apprehend these ravages from, without 
asking under what name they carried on their spoliations. 
Already, the year before, some bands had assembled in the 
same manner in Worcestershire and Dorsetshire, provoked by 
the violence of prince Rupert. In the month of March, 1645, 
the clubmen became, in the western counties, a permanent, 
regular, organized force, even commanded by gentlemen, of 
whom some had served in the king's army, and constantly 
engaged in the defence of property and persons, and in assert- 
ing order and peace. They treated with the troops and gar- 
risons of both parties, undertaking to supply them with 
provisions, on condition that they would not seize any with 
violence, even sometimes prevented them from coming to 
blows, and they had inscribed on their rustic colors these 
words : 

" If you offer to plunder our cattle. 
Be assured we vrill give you battle. "f 

* Clarendon, ii., passim. 

t Clarendon, ii., 997 ; Letter from Fairfax to the committee of the 
36 



302 HISTOKY OF THE 



So long as the royalists prevailed in the west, it was against 
them the clubmen assembled, and it was with the parlia- 
mentarians that they seemed disposed to combine. Now they 
threatened to burn the houses of whomsoever refused to join 
them in exterminating the cavaliers,* and invited Massey, 
who commanded in the name of the parliament in Worces- 
tershire, to come with them and besiege Hereford, whence the 
cavaliers infested the country .f On the 2d of June, at Wells, 
six thousand of them addressed a petition to the prince of 
Wales, complaining of Goring, and notwithstanding the 
prince's orders, refused to separate.:}: In the beginning of 
July, Fairfax arrived as a conqueror in the west ; the cava- 
liers were intimidated and ceased to devastate the country. 
The clubmen immediately turned against Fairfax and his 
soldiers. § But Fairfax had a good army, well paid, well 
provisioned, in which enthusiasm and discipline lent each 
other a mutual support. He dealt gently with the clubmen, 
negotiated with them, personally attended some of their meet- 
ings, and promised them peace while vigorously prosecuting 
war. In a few days the campaign was at an end. Goring, 
surprised and beaten at Langport, in Somersetshire (July 10), 
left the remnant of his troops to disperse whither they liked ; 
sir Richard Greenville sent his commission of field-marshal 
to the prince of Wales, impudently complaining that he had 
been made to carry on the war at his own expense ;|| and 
three weeks after the arrival of Fairfax, the cavaliers, who 
had lately traversed the west of England as masters, were 
almost all shut up in the towns which Fairfax next prepared 
to besiege. 

Meantime, in every direction, people were asking one 
another what the king was doing — nay, where he was, for 
scarcely any one knew. After the disaster of Naseby he had 
fled from town to town, scarcely giving himself any repose, 
and taking sometimes the road to the north, sometimes that 
to the west, to join Montrose or Goring, according to the mo- 
bility of his fears and projects. On arriving at Hereford, he 
resolved to go into Wales, where he hoped to recruit his in- 

two kingdoms, July 3, 1645 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 380; Whitelocke, /jasstwi , 
Neal, iii., 90. 

* Whitelocke, 136. f Ih., passim. } Clarendon, ut sup. 

§ Pari. Hist., iii., 380—386. || Clarendon, ii., 1003. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 303 

fantry, sent prince Rupert to Bristol, and pi'oceeded liimself 
to Ragland castle, the seat of the marquis of Worcester, the 
chief of the catholic party, and the richest nobleman in 
England. Secret projects, in which the catholics alone could 
aid him, regulated this determination. Besides, for three 
years the marquis had given the king proofs of inexhaustible 
devotion ; he had lent him 100,000Z., had levied at his own 
expense two regiments, under the command of his son, lord 
Herbert, earl of Glamorgan, and notwithstanding his age and 
infirmities, personally superintended a strong garrison in his 
own castle. He received the king with respectful pomp, 
assembled the nobility of the neighborhood, and surrounded 
him with the festivities, the sports, the homage, the pleasures 
of a court. The fugitive Charles breathed freely for awhile, 
as if restored to his natural position ; and for more than a 
fortnight, forgetting his misfortunes, his perils, his kingdom, 
only thought of enjoying his renewed royalty.* 

The news of the disasters in the west, drew him at last 
from his illusive apathy. At the same time, he learned that 
in the north the Scots had taken Carlisle (June 28), and were 
marching towards the south, meditating the siege of Hereford. 
He left Ragland to go to the assistance of Goring, but had 
scarcely reached the banks of the Severn, before the ill con- 
dition of the new levies, the dissensions among the officers, 
and a thousand unforeseen difficulties, discouraged him, and 
he returned into Wales. He was at Cardiff, not knowing upon 
what to resolve, when a letter was delivered to him, written 
by prince Rupert to the duke of Richmond, to be shown to 
the king. The prince considered that all was lost, and coun- 
selled peace, on whatever terms. As soon as his honor seemed 
in danger, Charles regained an energy which he never had 
when his mere personal safety was involved. He at once 
replied to his nephew thus (Aug. 3) : " If I had any other 
quarrel but the defence of my religion, crown, and friends, 
you had full reason for your advice. For I confess, that 
speaking either as to mere soldier or statesman, I must say there 
is no probability but of my ruin ; but as to Christian, I must 
tell you, that God will not sutler rebels to prosper, or his 
cause to be overthrown : and whatever personal punishment it 

* Walker's Discourses, 132. 



304 HISTORY OF THE 



shall please him to inflict upon me must not make me repine, 
much less to give over this quarrel. I must avow to all my 
friends, that he that will stay with me at this time, must ex- 
pect and resolve either to die for a good cause, or which is 
worse, to live as miserable in the maintaining it as the violence 
of insulting rebels can make him. For God's sake, let us not 
flatter ourselves with these conceits ; and believe me, the very 
imagination that you are desirous of a treaty, will lose me so 
much the sooner ;"* and, to rally his dejected adherents, re- 
calling himself all his courage, he at once quitted Wales, 
passed, without being observed, the quarters of the Scottish 
army already encamped under the walls of Hereford, rapidly 
traversed Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and Notting- 
hamshire, and, arriving safely in Yorkshire, summoned all his 
faithful cavaliers in the north to go with him to join Montrose, 
like them faithful, and still victorious. f 

The cavaliers hastened to obey the summons ; the presence 
of the king, who had so long lived among them, excited a warm 
enthusiasm throughout the country ; at the first mention of 
levying a regiment of infantry, large bodies of men, among the 
rest, the late garrisons of Pontefract and Scarborough, which 
had been obliged to surrender for want of provisions, and 
were now at liberty, came forward, and in three days nearly 
three thousand men had offered their services to the king, pro- 
mising to be ready, within twenty-four hours, to march at a 
moment's notice. They now oi;jly waited for a letter from 
Montrose, to know whether they should go and join him in 
Scotland or meet him in England. All at once, they learned 
that David Lesley, at the head of the Scottish cavalry, had 
quitted the siege of Hereford, and was already at Rotherham, 
ten miles from Doncaster, seeking everywhere for the king. 
The disaster of Naseby had given an effectual blow to the 
imagination of the royalists ; their confidence was no longer 
proof against the approach of danger. Many quitted Don- 
caster, and no others took their place : in the opinion of even 
the bravest, it was too late to attempt a junction with Mon- 
trose ; the king's safety was now the sole point to be attended 
to. He departed, followed by about fifteen hundred horse, 
traversed without obstacle the centre of the kingdom, even 

* Clarendon, ii., 1019. t Walker, 134, 135. 



ENGLISH EE VOLUTION. 305 

defeated on the road a few parliamentary detachments, and 
re-entered Oxford on the 29th of August, not knowing what to 
do with the handful of troops which now remained to him.* 

He had been there two days, when the news reached him 
of the recent and prodigious success of Montrose in Scotland ; 
it was no longer merely in the extreme north of the kingdom, 
among the highlanders, that the royal cause was triumphant ; 
Montrose had advanced towards the south, into the lowlands ; 
and on the 15th of August, at Kilsyth, not far from the ruins 
of the Roman wall, had obtained over the covenanters, com- 
manded by Baillie, the seventh and most splendid of his victo- 
ries. The hostile army was destroyed ; all the neighboring 
towns, Bothwell, Glasgow, even Edinburgh, had opened their 
gates to the conqueror ; all the royalists whom the Scottish 
parliament had detained in prison, were released ; all the 
timid, who had waited for some decided success to declare 
themselves, the marquis of Douglas, the earls of Annandale 
and Linlithgow, the lords Seaton, Drummond, Erskine, Car- 
negie, &c., now disputed which should be the first to offer his 
services to the king, fearing to be too late. The parliamenta- 
rian leaders were flying in every direction, some to England, 
others to Ireland. f Finally, the cavalry of the Scottish army, 
who were besieging Hereford, were recalled in all haste to 
defend their own country. Some even said, that when of 
late Lesley appeared in the neighborhood of Doncaster, far 
from seeking to encounter the king, he was on his march 
towards Scotland, and that the royalists had been utterly 
mistaken in their fears. ij: 

At this glorious intelligence, Charles's courage revived, and 
he immediately departed from Oxford (Aug. 31), to march 
against the Scottish army, take advantage of its reduced state, 
and compel it at least to raise the siege of Hereford. On his 
way, as he passed Ragland, he was informed that Fairfax had 
just invested Bristol, the most important of his possessions in 

* Walker, 135, 136 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 116 
t Rushworth, i., 4, 230 ; Guthrie, Memoirs, &c., 189. 
j Rushworth, i., 4, 231. Lesley had left the siege of Hereford in the 
first days of August, and the battle of Kilsyth did not take place till 
the 15th. It is therefore evident that he detached himself from the 
Scottish army to follow the king, and could not have been at that time 
recalled to the assistance of his country. 

26* 



306 HISTORY OF THE 



the west ; but the place was strong, and Prince Rupert, who 
defended it with a good garrison, promised to hold out four 
months at least : the king therefore felt no anxiety respecting 
it. When he was yet a day's journey from Hereford, he 
learned that the Scots, at the news of his approach, had raised 
the siege, and were precipitately retreating towards the north. 
He was urged to pursue them ; they were disconcerted, fa- 
tigued, in disorder, and were traversing a country ill-disposed 
towards them ; to harass them would perhaps suffice to destroy 
them. But Charles was fatigued himself by an activity which 
surpassed his strength ; he must, he said, go to the succor of 
Bristol ; and pending the arrival of some troops recalled from 
the west for this purpose, he returned to Ragland castle, 
attracted by the charms of that place, or to discuss with the 
marquis of Worcester the great and mysterious affair which 
they were arranging together.* 

He had scarcely arrived when he received the most unex- 
pected news, that prince Rupert had surrendered Bristol (Sept. 
ll)"!" at the first attack, almost without resistance, though he 
wanted nothing, ramparts, provisions, nor soldiers. Charles 
was in utter consternation : it was the entire ruin of his affairs 
in the west. He wrote to the prince ::j: " Nephew, — though 
the loss of Bristol be a great blow to me, yet your surrender- 
ing it as you did, is of much affliction to me, that it makes 
me not only forget the consideration of that place, but is like- 
wise the greatest trial of my constancy that hath yet befallen 
me. For what is to be done, after one that is so near to me 
as you are, both in blood and friendship, submits himself to an 

action so mean (I give it the easiest term), an action so 

I have so much to say, that I will say no more of it ; only, 
lest rashness of judgment be laid to my charge, I must re- 
member you of your letter of the 12th of August, wherein 
you assured me that if no mutiny happened, you would keep 
Bristol for four months. Did you keep it four days ? Was 
there anything like a mutiny ? More questions might be 
asked, but now, I confess, to little purpose ; my conclusion is 
to desire you to seek your subsistence, until it shall please 
God to determine of my condition, somewhere beyond seas ; 
to which end I send you herewith a pass. And I pray God 

* Clarendon, ii., 1041 ; Walker, 136 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 121. 

t Rushworth, 1., 4, 65. J From Hereford, 14th of September. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 307 

to make you sensible of your present condition, and give you 
means to redeem what you have lost ; for I shall have no 
greater joy in victory than a just occasion, without blushing, 
to assure you of my being your loving uncle and most faith- 
ful friend, Charles R."* 

He wrote the same day to Oxford,f whither the prince had 
retired, to oi'der the lords of the council to demand the prince's 
commissions, watch his proceedings, dismiss colonel William 
Legge, an intimate friend of Rupert, from his post as governor 
of Oxford, and to arrest the colonel, and even the prince, if 
any disturbance was excited ; and his letter concluded with 
this postscript : " Tell my son I would rather hear of his 
death, than of his doing so cowardly an act as this surrender 
of Bristol. "t 

One resource was left to the king, the same which he had 
already attempted in vain — to join Montrose. It was, more- 
over, necessary for him to march towards the north, to relieve 
Chester, again besieged, and which, now Bristol was lost, was 
the only port where succors from Ireland, his sole remaining 
hope, could land. After a week spent at Hereford in deep 
despondency, he set off over the Welsh mountains, the only 
I'oad by which he could escape a body of pai'liamentarians, 
who, under the command of major-general Poyntz, were 
watching all his motions. He was still accompanied by about 
five thousand men, Welsh infantry and northern horse. He 
was already within sight of Chester, when the parliamentari- 
ans, who had started later, but had found a more direct and 
better road, came upon his rear-guard (at Rounton Heath, 
Sept. 24. )§ Sir Marmaduke Langdale, who commanded it, 
charged the enemy with so much vigor, that he forced them 
to fall back in disorder. But colonel Jones, who directed the 
siege, detached a body of troops under his own oi'ders and 
appeared suddenly in the royalist rear. Poyntz rallied his 
men. The king, placed between two fires, saw his best offi- 
cers fall around him, and soon put to flight himself, returned 
utterly desperate into Wales, once more driven back, as by 

* Clarendon, ii., 1042. 

t To the secretary of state, sir Edward Nicholas. 

X Clarendon, ut sup. ; Evelyn, Memoirs, ii., App. 107 — 109. 

§ Rushworth, i., 4, 117 ; Clarendon, ii., 1069. 



308 HISTORY OF THE 



an insurmountable barrier, from the camp of Montrose, his 
last hope. 

This hope itself was now only a delusion ; for the last ten 
days Montrose, like the king, was a fugitive, seeking an 
asylum and soldiers. On the 13th of September, at Philip- 
haugh, in Ettriek forest, near the border, Lesley, whose ap- 
proach he was quite unconscious of, surprised him, weak and 
ill-guarded. Despite all his efforts, the highlanders had left 
him to return home, and so secure their plunder. Some lords, 
the earl of Aboyne among others, jealous of his glory, had 
also quitted him with their vassals ; others, such as lords 
Traquair, Hume, Roxburgh, mistrusting his fortune, notwith- 
standing their promises,* had not joined him. Bold, brilliant 
in his designs, in mean hearts he excited envy, and inspired 
no security in the timid. There was, moreover, a love of 
display, and somewhat of the braggadocio in his character, 
which was injurious to his influence : his officers served him 
with earnest devotion, his soldiers with enthusiasm, but he 
did not produce the same effect upon his equals. His power, 
besides, had no other foundation than his victories, and pru- 
dent men, daily an increasing class, looked upon him with 
surprise, as a meteor which nothing checks, but which has 
only a certain course to run. One reverse of fortune sufficed 
to dissipate all his eclat; and the day after his defeat, the 
conqueror of Scotland was nothing but an audacious outlaw. 

On hearing of this blow, Charles cast his eyes around hirn 
with terror, utterly at a loss where to place his hope. He 
was deficient even in councillors. The wisest of them, lord 
Capel, Colepepper, and Hyde, he had placed with his son ; 
lord Digby was almost the only one remaining, adventurous, 
confident as ever, always ready to oppose projects to defeats j 
and, notwithstanding the sincerity of his zeal, intent above 
all things on retaining his influence. At one time, the king 
entertained the idea of retiring to spend the winter in Angle- 
sey, an island on the coast of Wales, within easy reach of 
Ireland, and susceptible of a stout defence. He was easily 
dissuaded from thus forsaking his kingdom, where he still pos- 
sessed strong places, such as Worcester, Hereford, Chester, 
Oxford, and Newark. Every one else inclined to Worcester, 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 231 ; Guthrie, Memoirs, 198. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 309 

but nothing could be less palatable to lord Digby's views. 
The declared enemy of prince Rupert, it was he who, after 
the surrender of Bristol, had fomented the king's anger, and 
urged, it was said, the severity he had exercised towards his 
nephew. He well knew that Rupert, whose fury had not yet 
subsided, was determined to see the king, to justify himself, 
and take his revenge. Now at Worcester, he could easily 
accomplish this, for prince Maurice, his brother, was governor 
of that town. Of all the places to which the king could re- 
tire, Newark was that where prince Rupert would have the 
greatest difficulty in obtaining an audience. To the great 
surprise of all around him, the king decided upon going to 
Newark.* 

The prince was soon informed of this ; and notwithstand- 
ing his prohibition, immediately set out for Newark to 
see the king. Charles repeated that he would not receive 
him ; but lord Digby, for all that, grew uneasy. Whether 
by chance or by design, a report all at once circulated that 
Montrose had reti'ieved his defeat, had beaten Lesley, and was 
just on the borders. Without waiting for further information, 
the king set out with lord Digby and two thousand horse, to 
make a third attempt to join him. The error under which he 
was acting was speedily dissipated ; after two days' march, 
they had certain intelligence that Montrose, without any sol- 
diers at all, was still wandering in the highlands. The king 
could do nothing but return to Newark, as Digby himself ad- 
mitted. But fully resolved not to return there at the risk of 
encountering prince Rupert, he persuaded the king that, at 
whatever cost, aid must be sent to Montrose, and he under, 
took to convey it. They parted ; Digby, with fifteen hundred 
horse, nearly all the king had left, continued his route towards 
the north ; and Charles returned to Newark with three or 
four hundred horse as his entire army, and John Ashburnham, 
his valet de chambre, as his council. f 

On his arrival, he heard that Rupert was at Belvoir castle, 
nine miles off, with his brother Maurice, and an escort of one 
hundred and twenty officers. He sent him word to remain 
there until further orders, already angry that he had come so 
near without his consent. But the prince still advanced, and 
many officers of the garrison of Newark, even the governor, 

* Clarendon, ii., 1073. f lb., 1078. 



310 HISTORY OF THE 



sir Richard Willis, went to meet him. He arrived, and with- 
out being announced, presented himself, with all his suite, 
before the king. " Sire," he said, " I am come to render 
an account of the loss of Bristol, and to clear myself from 
the imputations which have been cast on me." Charles, as 
perplexed as irritated, scarcely answered him. It was supper 
time ; the prince's escort withdrew ; the royal party sat down 
to table ; the king talked with Maurice without addressing a 
word to Rupert, and, supper over, retired to his room. Ru- 
pert went and took up his abode with the governor. The 
next day, however, the king consented to the calling of a 
council of war, and after a few hours' sitting, a declaration 
was given, stating that the prince had not been deficient 
either in courage or fidelity. No solicitation could obtain 
more than this from the king. 

It was too little to satisfy the prince and his partisans. 
They remained at Newark, giving unrestrained vent to their 
anger. The king, on his side, undertook to put an end to the 
growing excesses of the garrison. For two thousand men, 
there were twenty- four officers, generals or colonels, whose 
maintenance absorbed nearly all the contributions of the 
county.* The gentlemen of the neighborhood, even those of 
the most devoted loyalty, bitterly complained of the governor. 
Charles resolved to remove him, but, out of consideration for 
appearances, to give him some office about his person He 
therefore informed him that he was appointed colonel of his 
horse guards. Sir Richard refused, saying, that people would 
regard this promotion as a disgrace ; that he was too poor for 
the court : " I will see to that," said the king, dismissing him. 
The very same day, at dinner time, when Charles was at table, 
sir Richard Willis, the two princes, lord Gerrard, and twenty 
officers of the garrison abruptly entered : " What your ma- 
jesty said to me this morning in private," said Willis, " is 
now the public talk of the town, and very much to my disho- 
nor." " It is not for any fault," added Rupert, " that sir 
Richard loses his government, but because he is my friend." 
" All this," said lord Gerrard, " is a plot of lord Digby's, who 
is himself a traitor, and I will prove it." 

Astonished and perplexed, Charles rose from the table, and 



* Clarendon, ii., 1079. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 311 

moving a few steps towards his private apartment, ordered 
Willis to follow him : " No, sire," replied Willis ; " I received 
a public injury, and I expect a public satisfaction." At this, 
Charles, losing all self-command, pale with anger, sprang 
towards them, and with a loud voice and threatening gesture, 
said : " Quit my presence, and come no more near me." 
Agitated in their turn, they all hastily went out, returned to 
the governor's house, sounded to horse, and left the town, to 
the number of two hundred cavaliers. 

All the garrison, all the inhabitants hastened to offer the 
king the expression of their devotion and respect. In the 
evening, the malecontents sent to him for passports, begging 
him not to consider this as a mutiny : "I shall not now 
christen it," said the king; "but it looks very like one. As 
for passports, let them have as many as they please."* He 
was still full of agitation at this scene, when he received the 
intelligence that lord Digby, in his march towards Scotland, 
had been overtaken and beaten at Sherborne by a detachment 
of parliamentarians (towards the middle of October, 1645) ;"t" 
that his cavaliers were dispersed, and he himself gone none 
knew whither. So there remained in the direction of the 
north neither soldiers nor hope. Even Newark was no longer 
safe : Poyntz's troops had approached, taking possession suc- 
cessively of all the neighboring places, drawing their lines 
every day closer and closer round it, so that it was already a 
question whether the king could pass. On the 3d of Novem- 
ber, at eleven o'clock at night, four or five hundred cavaliers, 
the wreck of several regiments, were assembled in the market- 
place : the king appeared, took the command of a squadron, 
and left Newark by the Oxford road. He had had his beard 
shaved off; two small royalist garrisons, situated on his way, 
had received notice of his design ; he travelled day and night, 
with difficulty avoiding the enemy, and thought himself saved 
when he re-entered Oxford (Nov. 6, 1645) ; for there he 
found once more his council, his court, his ordinary mode of 
life, and somewhat of rest.:}: 

He soon found misery also : while he had been wandering 
from county to county, from town to town, Fairfax and 
Cromwell, having nothing to fear from him, and certain that 

* Clai-endon, ii., 1083. t lb., 1067 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 128. 

X Clarendon, ii., 1085; Walker, 146 ; Evelyn, Mem., ii., App. 109- 



312 HISTORY OF THE 



the troops of Poyntz would suffice to harass him, had pursued 
the course of their successes in the west. In less than five 
months, fifteen places of importance, Bridgewater (July 23, 
1645), Bath (July 29), Sherborne (Aug. 15), Devizes (Sept. 
23), Winchester (Sept. 28), Basing-House (Oct. 14), Tiverton 
(Oct. 19), Monmouth (Oct. 22), &c., had fallen into their 
hands. To such garrisons as showed themselves disposed to 
listen to their overtures, they unhesitatingly granted honor- 
able conditions ; where a less compliant answer was given, 
they immediately proceeded to storm.* For a moment the 
clubmen gave them some uneasiness. After having dis- 
persed them several times by fair words, Cromwell at last 
found himself obliged to attack them. He did so suddenly 
and fiercely, skilful in passing all at once, according to circum- 
stances, from gentleness to severity, from severity to gentle- 
ness. By his advice, parliament denounced as high treason 
all associations of the kind (Aug. 23) ;■(" some of the leaders 
were arrested ; the strict discipline of the army reassured the 
people ; the clubmen soon disappeared ; and when the king 
re-entered Oxford, the situation of his party in the west was 
so desperate, that next morning (Nov. 7) he wrote to the prince 
of Wales directing him to hold himself ready to pass over to 
the continent.:}: 

For himself, he had no plan — no idea what to do ; now a 
prey to passionate anguish, now seeking to forget in repose 
the feeling of his utter powerlessness. He invited, however, 
the council to point out some expedient to him, some method 
of proceeding from which a favorable result might be looked 
for. There was no choice left : the council proposed a mes- 
sage to parliament, and the request of a safe-conduct for four 
negotiators. The king consented without a single objection.^ 

Never had parliament been less inclined for peace. One 
hundred and thirty members had just entered the house of 
commons, in place of those who had left it to follow the king. 
Long postponed, first from caution, then from the difficulty of 
its execution, afterwards by design, this measure had at last 
been adopted at the demand of the independents, eager to take 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 89. f Pari. Hist., iii., 390 ; Whitelocke, 167. 
t Clarendon, ii., 1062. 

§ Clarendon, ii., 1116 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 405, The message was 
dated 5th of December, 1645. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 313 

advantage of their successes on the field of battle to strengthen 
their party at Westminster.* They set every engine to work 
to carry the new elections, appointing them separately one 
after another, even having them delayed or put forward, 
according to the chances in their favor ; employing both 
deceit and violence, as is the wont of conquerors still in a 
minority. Several men, soon afterwards famous in the party, 
now entered parliament — Fairfax, Ludlow, Ireton, Blake, 
Sidney, Hutchinson, Fleetwood. Still the elections had not 
everywhere th esame result : many counties sent to Westmin- 
ster men, who, though opposed to the court, were strangers to 
faction, and friends to legal order and peace. But they were 
without experience, without combination, without leaders, and 
little disposed to rally round their old presbyterian chiefs, who 
had, most of them at all events, lost their' reputation respec- 
tively of uprightness, or energy, or ability. They made little 
sensation, exercised little influence ; and the first effect of this 
filling up of the house was to give to the independents greater 
daring and power. f The acts of parliament thenceforward 
assumed a sterner character. It has been ascertained that, 
during their stay in London, the king's commissioners were 
intriguing to form plots and stir up the people ; it was decided 
(Aug. 11.)^ that no more commissioners should be received, 
that there should be no more negotiations, that the house 
should draw up their proposals in the form of bills, and that 
the king should be called upon simply to adopt or reject them, 
as if he were at Whitehall and proceeding according to the 
regular practice. The prince of Wales (Sept. 20)§ offered 
to mediate between the king and the people, and Fairfax 
transmitted his letter to the house ; " Thinking it a duty," he 

* It was on the 13th of September, 1644, that it was first proposed in 
the house of commons to fill up the vacant places. The proposal had 
no result till August, 1645. On the 21st of that month, upon a petition 
from the borough of Southwark, the house voted, by a majority of only 
three, that five of the absent members should be replaced ; namely, the 
members for Southwark, Bury St. Edmund's, and Hythe. One hun- 
dred and forty-six new members were elected in the five last months 
of 1645. Out of fifty-eight signatures to the order for the execution of 
Charles I., seventeen were those of members elected at this epoch. In 
1646, there were eighty-nine new elections. — Journals, Commons, 

t Holies, Memoirs, 42; Ludlow, passim; Whitelocke, 166, and 
passim 

X Pari. Hist., iii., 390. § lb., 292. 

27 



314 HISTORY OF THE 



said, " not to hinder the hopeful blossom of your young peace- 
maker." He did not even receive an answer. The term of 
Cromwell's command was nearly expired ; it was prolonged 
another four months without any reason being assigned (Aug. 
12).* The rigor against the royalists redoubled : a late 
ordinance had granted to the wives and children of delinquents 
one-fifth of the revenue of sequestered estates ; it was repealed 
(Sept. 8).f Another act, for a long time resisted by the lords, 
directed the sale of a considerable portion of the possessions 
of bishops and delinquents (Sept. 13)4 ^"^ the camp, in the 
warfare, the same revolution took place. It was forbidden to 
give any quarter to the Irish taken in England bearing arms 
(Oct. 24) ;§ they were shot by hundreds,|| or tied back to 
back, and thrown into the sea. Even among the English, 
there was no longer exhibited that mutual forbearance and 
courtesy which characterized the first campaigns, revealing, 
in the two parties, a condition well nigh equal, the same 
education and manners, the habit and desire of peace, even 
amidst war. In the parliamentarian ranks, Fairfax almost 
alone retained this refined humanity ; round him, officers and 
soldiers, brave and skilfiil parvenus, but of rough manners, or 
fanatics of a dark and violent temperament, who had no 
thought but of victory, no idea of the cavaliers but as enemies 
to be got rid of. The cavaliers, on their side, irritated at 
being defeated by such vulgar antagonists, sought consolation 
or revenge in ridicule, epigrams, and songs, daily more and 
more insulting.U Thus the war assumed a stern, at times 
even a cruel character, as between men whose only feeling 
was mutual scorn and hate. At the same time, the misunder- 
standing, hitherto kept in check, between the Scots and the 
parliament, broke out unrestrainedly ; the former complained 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 590. t Rushworth, i., 4, 209. 

t Pali. Hist, iii., 391 ; Whitelocke, 172. § Rushworth, ii., 3, 783. 

II Baillie, Letters, ii., 164; Rushworth, 4, 231. 

IT The most remarkable of these songs are those which were com- 
posed against David Lesley and his Scots, when he left the siege of 
Hereford to go to the assistance of Scotland, almost entirely subjugated 
by Montrose, whom he defeated on the 13th of September, 1645, at the 
battle of Philiphaugh. No defeat had yet snatched from the cavaliers 
such brilliant hopes, and their anger vented itself with energy, in a 
vein of poetical animation which was then very extraordinary. For 
one of the most spirited of these songs, see Appendix No. XIV. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 315 

that their army was not paid ; the latter, that an army of 
allies should pillage and devastate, as though they were a 
hostile force, the counties which they occupied.* In every 
quarter, in short, excitement more ardent than ever, hatred 
more profound, measures harsher and more decisive, left but 
little chance of peace being allowed to put a stop to, or even 
a truce to suspend the already so rapid course of events. 

The king's overtures were rejected, and a safe-conduct de- 
nied to his negotiators. He urged the point by two other 
messages, still without success ; he was told that the past in- 
trigues of his courtiers in the city rendered it impossible they 
should be allowed to return there (Dec. 26). f He offered him- 
self to come to Westminster to treat in person with the parlia- 
ment (Dec. 26 and 30) ;:}: notwithstanding the entreaties of the 
Scots, this proposal met with as ill a reception as the others 
(Jan. 13). § He renewed his entreaties (Jan. 15), 1| less from 
any hope of success, than to discredit the parliament in the 
opinion of the people who wished for peace. But his ene- 
mies had lately acquired a still surer means of discrediting 
the king himself; they solemnly proclaimed that they at last 
possessed the proof of his duplicity ; that he had just con- 
cluded with the Irish, not merely a suspension of arms, but 
a treaty of alliance ; that ten thousand of these rebels, under 
the command of the earl of Glamorgan, were soon to land at 
Chester ; that the price of this odious aid was the complete 
abolition of the penal laws against the catholics, full liberty 
for their worship, the acknowledgment of their right to the 
churches and lands which they had taken possession of ; in 
other words, the triumph of popery in Ireland and the ruin 
of the protestants. A copy of the treaty, and several letters 
relating to it, had been found in the carriage of the arch- 
bishop of Tuam, one of the rebel leaders killed by chance in 
a skirmish under the walls of Sligo (Oct. 17, 1645). The 
committee of the two kingdoms, who for three months had 
hept these documents in reserve for some important occasion, 
now laid them before parliament, which immediately ordered 
them to be published. IF 

The king was utterly disconcerted ; the facts were real ; 

* Pari. Hist, ill., 393, 394, 398, 405. f lb., 414. t lb., 415— 417. 
§Ib., 418—421. 11 lb., 421. irib.,428 ; Rushworth.i., 4, 238, ef «e?. 



316 HISTORY OF THE 



nay, parliament did not know all. For nearly two years,* 
Charles had been carrying on this negotiation in person, un- 
known to his party, his council, even making some points a 
secret from the marquis of Ormond, his lieutenant in Ireland, 
though he did not doubt his zeal, and could not stir without his 
assistance ; a Roman catholic, lord Herbert, eldest son of the 
marquis of Worcester, and himself recently created earl of 
Glamorgan, alone possessed, in this affair, the king's entire 
confidence. Brave, generous, reckless, passionately devoted 
to his master in peril and to his religion oppressed, it was 
Glamorgan who went backwards and forwards incessantly 
between England and Ireland, or between Dublin and Kil- 
kenny, undertaking what Ormond refused to do, and alone 
knowing how far the king's concessions would extend. It was he 
who conducted the correspondence of Charles with Rinuccini, 
the pope's nuncio, who had lately arrived in Ireland (Oct. 22, 
1645), and with the pope himself. In short, the king had 
formally authorized him, by an act signed with his own hand 
(dated March 12, 1645), and known to themselves alone, to 
grant the Irish all he should judge necessary to obtain from 
them efficacious help, undertaking to approve all, to ratify all, 
however illegal the concessions might be, desiring only that 
nothing should transpire till the day when he could with effect 
avow the whole. The treaty had been concluded the preceding 
20th of August, and Glamorgan, who was still in Ireland, ear- 
nestly pressed forward its execution. This was the secret of 
those frequent visits, those long sojourns of the king at Ragland 
castle, the residence of the marquis of Worcester, and of those 
mysterious hopes which he sometimes gave half-utterance to 
amidst his re verses, f 

They heard almost at the same time, at Oxford and at 
Dublin, that the treaty was known in London. Ormond at 
once comprehended how severe a blow it would inflict upon 
the king's cause with his own party. Whether he himself 
was, as he affirmed, really ignorant that Charles had authorized 

* The first commission of the king to Glamorgan was dated April 1 , 
1644. 

t Mr. Lingard has collected, and clearly stated, all the facts con- 
nected with this negotiation, of which he possesses the principal 
original documents. — History of England, 1825, vi., 537 — 541 ; 
655—664. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 31 1 

such concessions, or whether, rather, he wished to give him 
an opportunity of disavowing them, he instantly caused Gla- 
morgan to be arrested (Jan. 4, 1646), as having exceeded his 
powers, and seriously compromised the king, by granting to 
the rebels what all the laws denied them. Steadfast in his 
devotion, Glamorgan remained silent, did not produce the 
secret instructions signed " Charles," which he had in his 
possession, and even said that the king was not bound to ratify 
what he had thought fit to promise in his name. Charles, 
on his side, hastened to disown him, in a proclamation he 
addressed to parliament (Jan. 21),* and in his official letters 
to the council in Dublin (Jan. 31). f According to him, 
Glamorgan had no other commission than to raise soldiers and 
second the efforts of the lord-lieutenant ; but, on both sides, 
falsehood was now merely an old and useless habit ; none, 
not even the people, were any longer deceived by it. In a 
few days (Feb. 1), Glamorgan was released, and resumed 
his negotiations for the transmission, on the same terms as 
before, of an Irish army into England. The parliament voted 
that the king's justification was not sufficient (Jan. 31).:}: 
Cromwell, for the last time, was continued in his command 
(Jan. 27), § and Charles found himself obliged to seek once 
more his preservation in war, as though he were able to 
carry it on. 

Only two bodies of troops remained to him : one in Cornwall, 
under the command of lord Hopton ; the othes on the frontiers 
of Wales, under lord Astley . Towards the middle of January, 
the prince of Wales, still governor of the west, but forsaken 
by his late generals Goring and Greenville, had sent for lord 
Hopton, who had formerly for a long time commanded in that 
quarter, to conjure him to resume the command of what re- 
mained of the army. " My lord," answered Hopton, " it is 
now a custom, when men are not willing to submit to what 
they are enjoined, to say that it is against their honor ; that 
their honor will not suffer them to do this or that ; for my part, 
I cannot at this time obey your highness without resolving to 
lose my honor ; but since your highness has thought fit to 
command me, I am ready to obey, even with the loss of my 
honor ;" and he took the command of seven or eight thousand 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 435. t Carte's Life of Ormond, iii., 445—447. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 438. § lb., 428. 

27* 



318 HISTORY OF THE 



men.* But he was soon as odious to them as their excesses 
were to him ; even the really brave among them could not 
endure his discipline and vigilance, accustomed as they had 
been, under Goring, to a less troublesome and more profitable 
warfare. Fairfax, still occupied in subduing the west, marched 
before long against them ; and on the 16th of February, Hop- 
ton underwent, at Torrington, on the borders of Cornwall, a 
defeat rather disastrous than bloody. He vainly endeavored, 
as he retired from town to town, to recruit his party ; he was 
destitute alike of officers and of soldiers : " From the hour I 
undertook this charge," said he, "to the hour of their dissolving, 
scarce a party or a guard appeared with half the number ap- 
pointed, or within two hours of the time.""]" Fairfax every 
day pressed more closely upon him. At the head of the small 
corps which still remained faithful, Hopton soon found himself 
driven to the Land's-end. At Truro, he was informed that, 
weary of the war, the people of the country meditated putting 
an end to it by seizing the prince of Wales, and giving him 
up to parliament. The necessity had arrived ; the prince 
embarked, with his council, but only to retire to Scilly, on 
English land, almost in sight of the coast. Relieved from this 
anxiety, Hopton wished to try the effect of another battle ; but 
his troops loudly called upon him to capitulate. Fairfax of- 
fered him honorable conditions — he still evaded them : his 
officers declared that if he did not consent, they would treat 
without him. " Treat, then," said he, " but not for me ;" 
and neither he nor lord Capel would be included in the 
capitulation. The articles signed and the army broken up, 
these noblemen embarked to join the prince at Scilly ; and 
the king now possessed in the west only a few insignificant 
garrisons.:]: 

Lord Astley met with no better fortune : he was at Wor- 
cester with three thousand men ; the king ordered him to join 
him at Oxford, and set out himself with fifteen hundred horse 
to meet him. He wished to assemble round him a sufficient 
corps to wait for the succors from Ireland, which he still ex- 

* " Fellows," observes Clarendon, " whom only their friends feared 
and their enemies laughed at, being only terrible in plunder and reso- 
lute in running away." — Clarendon, ii., 1089. 

t Clarendon, ii., 1097. 

X Clarendon, ii., 1102: Rushworth, i., 4, 99 — 115. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 819 

pected ; but before they met (March 22), sir William Brereton 
and colonel Morgan, at the head of a body of parliamentarians, 
overtook Astley, whose movements they had been watching 
for the last month, at Stow, in Gloucestershire. The defeat 
of the cavaliers was complete ; eighteen hundred of them were 
killed or taken ; the others dispersed. Astley himself, after 
a desperate resistance, fell into the hands of the enemy ; he 
was old, fatigued by the conflict, and walked with difficulty ; 
the soldiers, touched by his grey hairs and his courage, 
brought him a drum to rest upon : he sat down upon it, and, 
addressing Brereton's officers : " Gentlemen," said he, " you 
have done your work, and may now go to play, unless you 
prefer to fall out among yourselves."* 

This, indeed, was the only hope Charles himself had left ; 
he hastened to try and promote it. Already, at the very time 
he was loading some of the presbyterian leaders with com- 
promising attentions, he had long kept up a secret correspon- 
dence with the independents, particularly with Vane, not less 
active in intrigue than passionate in enthusiasm. Just before 
the affair at Stow, the secretary of state Nicholas had written 
(March 2) to Vane, soliciting him to contrive that the king 
might be enabled to come to London and treat in person with 
the parliament, promising that if it required the triumph of 
presbyterian discipline, the royalists would combine with the 
independents " to extirpate from the kingdom this tyrannical 
domination, and secure each other's liberty. "j" It is not 
known what reply Vane sent to this letter ; but after Astley's 
defeat the king himself wrote to him : " Be very confident," 
he said, " that all things shall be performed according to my 
promise. By all that is good, I conjure you to dispatch that 
courtesy for me with all speed, or it will be too late ; I shall 
perish before I receive the fruits of it. I may not tell you 
my necessities ; but if it were necessary so to do, I am sure 
you would lay all other considerations aside and fulfil my 
desires. This is all ; trust me, I will repay the favor to the 
full. I have done ; if I have no answer within four days 
after the receipt of this, I shall be necessitated to find some 
other expedient. God direct you! I have discharged my 
duty.":j: At the same time, he addressed a message to par- 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 139—141. t Evelyn, Memoirs, ii., App., 115 
I Evelyn, ii., App., 116 ; Clarendon, State Papers (1773), u., 227. 



320 HISTORY OF THE 



liament, offering to disband all his troops, to open all his gar- 
risons, and to come and resume his residence at Whitehall 
(March 23).* 

At this proposal, and on the report that, without waiting for 
an answer, the king was likely to arrive, the greatest alarm 
prevailed in Westminster ; politicians or fanatics, presbyte- 
rians or independents, all knew that, the king once at White- 
hall, it would no longer be against him that the riots of the 
city would be directed ; all were alike resolved not to subject 
themselves to his mercy. They at once took, to avert so 
great a danger, the most violent measures ; it was forbidden 
to receive the king, or to go near him if he came to London, 
or to give to any one whatever the means of approaching him. 
The committee of the militia received orders to prevent any 
public meeting, to arrest any one that should come with the 
king, to prevent the people from flocking to meet him ; even, 
if necessary, to secure his own person " from all danger," as 
they put it. Papists, delinquents, cashiered officers, soldiers 
of fortune, whoever had taken any part against parliament, 
received orders to quit London within three days (March 31 
— April S)."]" Ultimately a court-martial was established 
(April 3),:{: and the punishment of death decreed against any 
person who should hold direct or indirect intercourse with the 
king, or who should come without a pass from any camp or 
town occupied by the king, or who should receive or conceal 
any man who had carried arms against the parliament, or 
who should wilfully allow a prisoner of war to escape, &c. 
Never had act of the parliament borne the impress of such 
terror. 

Vane, on his part, left the king's letter without answer, or 
at least without effect. 

Meantime, Fairfax's troops were advancing by forced 
marches to besiege Oxford. Already colonel Rainsborough's 
and two other regiments were encamped in sight of the place. 
The king offered to give himself up to Rainsborough if he 
would pledge his word to conduct him immediately to parlia- 
ment. Rainsborough refused. In a few days, the blockade 
could not fail to be complete, and, whatever its duration, the 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 451. t lb., 452—453 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 249. 

X Rushworth, i., 4, 252. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 321 

result was infallible ; the king must fall as a prisoner of war 
into the hands of his enemies. 

One only refuge remained possible, the Scottish camp. For 
the last two months, M. de Montreuil, the French minister, 
touched by Charles's distress, rather than to obey the insti'uc- 
tions of Mazarin, had been endeavoring to secure for him this 
last asylum. Rebuffed in the first instance by the Scottish 
commissioners residing in London, convinced by a journey 
to Edinburgh that there was nothing to hope from the Scottish 
parliament, he at last addressed himself to some of the 
leaders of the army besieging Newark ; and their disposition 
had appeared to him so favorable, that he thought himself 
warranted in promising the king (April 1), in the name and 
under the guarantee of the king of France, that the Scots 
would receive him as their legitimate sovereign, would shel- 
ter him and his from all danger, and would even co-operate 
with him to the utmost of their power in the re-establishment 
of peace. But the hesitations and retractations of the Scot- 
tish officers, who were willing to save the king, but not to 
quarrel with the parliament, soon showed Montreuil that he 
had gone too far, and he hastened to send word of his error to 
Oxford. But necessity, daily more urgent, rendered Charles 
and Montreuil himself less scrupulous ; the queen, who from 
Paris maintained a correspondence with the agents in the 
Scottish army, exhorted her husband to trust to it. In later 
conferences, the officers made some promises to Montreuil. 
He informed the king of them, repeating, however, that the 
step was hazardous, and any other refuge preferable ; but 
adding, that if he could find no other asylum, he would find, 
for his person, at least, full safety among the Scots.* 

At all events, Charles could wait no longer where he was ; 
Fairfax had already reached Newbury, and the blockade 
would within three days be complete. On the 27th of April, 
at midnight, followed only by Ashburnham and an ecclesias- 
tic (Dr. Hudson), who was well acquainted with the roads, 
the king left Oxford on horseback, disguised as Ashburn- 
ham's servant, with their common portmanteau behind him ; 
and, at the same time, to mislead all watchers, three men 
went out at each gate of the town. The king took the road to 

* In his letters of the 15th, 16th, and 20th April; Clarendon, State 
Papers, ii., 211 — 216. 



322 HISTOKY OF THB 



London. On arriving at Harrow Hill, in sight of his capital, 
he stopped for awhile, and anxiously deliberated, whether he 
should go to London, re-enter Whitehall, appear all at once 
in the city, where men's thoughts had for some time past 
been disposed favorably towards him. But nothing less suit- 
ed him than any singular or daring resolution, for he was 
deficient in presence of mind, and, above all things, dreaded 
any chance of compromising his royal dignity. After a few 
hours' hesitation, he turned from London and proceeded 
towards the north, but slowly, almost at random, as a man 
still yet undetermined. Montreuil had promised to come and 
meet him at Harborough, in Leicestershire, but he was not 
there. The king, uneasy at this, sent Hudson to seek him, 
and turned towards the eastern counties, wandering from town 
to town, from castle to castle, especially along the coast, con- 
tinually changing his disguise ; and inquiring everywhere for 
news of Montrose, whom he earnestly desired to join. But 
this, also,,was too tedious and troublesome an enterprise for 
him. Hudson returned ; no change had taken place : Mon- 
treuil still promised, if not an agreeable, at least a safe retreat 
in the Scottish camp. Charles at last made up his mind, as 
much from weariness as choice ; and on the 5th of May, nine 
days after his departure from Oxford, Montreuil introduced 
him early in the morning into Kelham, the head-quarters of 
the Scots.* 

On seeing the king, the earl of Leven and his officers af- 
fected extreme surprise ; information of his arrival was im- 
mediately given to the parliamentary commissioners ; expresses 
were dispatched to announce it in Edinburgh and London. 
Officers and soldiers treated the king with profound respect ; 
but, in the evening, under the pretext of rendering him due 
honor, a strong guard was placed at his door ; and when, to 
discover what was his situation, he attempted to give out the 
watchword for the night, " Pardon me, sire," said Leven, " I 
am the oldest soldier here ; your majesty will permit me to 
undertake that duty."f 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 267 ; Clarendon, State Papers, ii., 288. 
t Malcolm Laing, Hist, of Scotland ill., 352, note 7, 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 823 



BOOK THE SEVENTH. . 
1646—1647. 

Anxiety and intrigues of the independents — The king's stay at Newcas- 
tle — He rejects the proposals of parliament — The parliament nego- 
tiates with the Scots, to induce them to give up the king and retire 
from the kingdom — They consent — The king is conducted to Holmby 
— Discord breaks out between the parliament and the army — Con- 
duct of Cromwell — He causes the king to be taken from Holmby — 
The army marches upon London, and impeaches eleven presbyteri- 
an leaders — They retire from parliament — Stay of the king at 
Hampton Court — Negotiations of the army with him — Rising in 
the city in favor of peace — A great many members of both houses 
retire to the army — They are brought by the army back to London — 
Defeat of the presbyterians — Republicans and levellers — Cromwell 
becomes suspected by the soldiers — They mutiny against the officers 
— Cromwell's able conduct — Alarm of the king — He escapes to the 
Isle of Wight. 

It was known in London (May 2) that the king had left Ox- 
ford, but nothing indicated where he was or whither he was 
going. There was a report that he was concealed in the city, 
and whoever should receive him was again menaced with 
death without mercy. Fairfax sent word that he had pro- 
ceeded towards the east, and two officers of assured devotion, 
colonels Russel and Wharton, were immediately despatched 
in that direction, with orders to seek him everywhere, and at 
any rate.* Parliamentarians and royalists, both plunged into 
the same uncertainty, bore with equal patience, the former 
their fears, the latter their hopes. 

On the evening of the 6th of May, the news at length ar- 
rived that the king was in the Scottish camp. Next day the 
commons voted that parliament alone had the right to dispose 
of his person, and that he should be conducted without delay 
to Warwick castle. The lords refused to sanction this vote ; 
but they approved of Poyntz, who was quartered near New- 

•Rushworth, i., 4, 267 ; Whitelocke, 203. 



324 HISTORY OF THE 



ark, receiving orders to watch the movements of the Scottish 
army ; and Fairfax was directed to hold himself ready to 
march in case of need.* 

The Scots, on their part, desirous of getting away, obtained 
an order from the king, on the very day of his arrival, for 
lord Bellasis, the governor of Newark, to open its gates to 
them ; they gave up the town to Poyntz, and a few hours 
afterwards, placing the king in their advanced guard, marched 
towards Newcastle, on the frontiers of their own country. f 

The independents were full of anxiety and anger. For a 
year past everything had prospered with them ; masters of 
the army, they had been everywhere conquerors, and had 
made, by their victories, a deep impression on the imagina- 
tion of the people ; under their banners, ranged themselves all 
the bold spirits of the time, the men of energetic, ambitious, 
exalted hopes, whoever had his fortune to make, or had formed 
rash wishes, or meditated some great design. Genius itself 
could only find a place and liberty among them. Milton, still 
young, but already remarkable for the elegance and extent of 
his knowledge, had just claimed, in nobler language than had 
yet been heard, liberty of conscience, liberty of the press, the 
right of divorce ;:{: and the presbyterian clergy, incensed at 
his boldness, having without effect reported him to parliament, 
placed among its sins the toleration of such writings. Ano- 
ther extraordinary man, already known by his passionate re- 
sistance to tyranny, John Lilburne, was beginning his indefa- 
tigable war against lords, judges, lawyers ; and already the 
most loud-tongued popularity was attached to his name. The 
number and confidence of the dissenting congregations,^ all 
allied with the independents, daily increased ; it was in vain 
that the presbyterians had, at length, obtained from parliament 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 465, 466. f lb., 467 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 269—271. 

J In five pamphlets, against episcopal government and on the reform 
of the church, published in 1641 and 1642 ; in a pamphlet entitled, 
" The Doctrine and discipline of Divorce," published in 1644 ; and in a 
pamphlet entitled, " Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," 
published also in 1644. 

§ The number of anabaptist meetings, for instance, was already fifty- 
four in 1644. Thomas Edwards, a presbyteriam minister, published 
in 1645, under the title of " Gangraena," a catalogue of those sects, to 
call down the rigor of parliament upon them ; he reckoned sixteen 
principal ones, and had omitted several. — Neal, iii., 310. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 325 

the exclusive and official establishment of their church ;* with 
the aid of the lawyers and freethinkers, the independents had 
succeeded in maintaining the supremacy of parliament in re- 
ligious affairs ;f and the presbyterian measure, thus weaken- 
ed, was but slowly executed. :{: Meantime, the personal for- 
tunes of the leaders of the party, that of Cromwell in particu- 
lar, progressed rapidly : when they came from the army to 
Westminster, parliament received them with solemn homage ;§ 
v/hen they returned to the army, gifts of money and land, 
gratuities and offices, lavished on their creatures, attested and 
extended their influence. || Everywhere, in short, in London 
as in the counties, and whether as regarded politics or reli- 
gion, interests or ideas, it was in favor of this party that the 
social movement had more and more decidedly pronounced 
itself. In the midst of so much prosperity, just as power was 
within their reach, they found themselves menaced with the 
loss of all ; for they would indeed lose all if the king and the 
presbyterians allied against them. 

They used every effort to ward off this blow : had they 
been free to follow their own impulse, they would perhaps 
have sent the army immediately against the Scots, and taken 
the king by main force ; but notwithstanding their success in 
the new elections, they were obliged to act with more reserve ; 
with a minority in the upper house, in the lower they only 
possessed a precarious ascendency, derived rather from the 
inexperience of the members recently elected than from their 
real sentiments. They had recourse to indirect measures ; 
they sought by all kinds of means, daring or crafty, secret or 

* By several ordinances or votes of the 23d of August, 20th of Octo- 
ber, and 8th of November, 1645, and the 20th of February and 14th of 
March, 1646.— Rushworth, i., 4, 205, 210, 224. 

t Neal, iii., 231; Journals, Commons, Sept. 25, Oct. 10, 1645; 
March 5 and 23, April 22, 1646 ; Baillie, Letters, ii., 194 ; Pari. Hist, 
iii., 459. 

t The presbyterian church was never completely established any- 
where but in London and Lancashire. — Laing, iii., 347. 

§ Pari. Hist, iii., 463, 529. 

]| The parliament gave, 1, to Cromwell (February 7, 1646), landed 
property to the value of 2,500/., part of the estates of the marquis of 
Worcester (Pari. Hist., iii., 439) ; 2, to Fairfax, a few months after, an 
income of 5000/. (Whitelocke, 228, 239) ; 3, to Sir William Brereton, 
in October, 1646, a gratuity of 5000/. ; 4, to sir Peter Killigrew, in 
December, 1646, a gratuity of 2000/.— (lb., 228, 235, &c.) 
29 



326 HISTORY OF THE 



open, to offend the Scots or irritate the people against them, in 
the hope of bringing about a rupture ; the Scottish messen- 
gers were stopped and their despatches intercepted, at the very- 
gates of London, by subalterns against whom they claimed 
justice in vain (May 9) ;* petitions flocked in against them 
from the northern counties, relating their exactions, their ex- 
cesses, and the sufferings the people endured at their hands, j- 
Alderman Foot presented one petition, in the name of the city, 
in their favor (May 26),:}: and requiring, on the other hand, 
the repression of the new sectaries, as authors of the troubles 
in church and state ; the lords thanked the common council, 
but the commons scarcely vouchsafed a brief, dry answer. 
There were still a few regiments left, the remnant of Essex's 
army, in which presbyterian sentiments prevailed ; among 
others, a brigade quartered in Wiltshire, under the command 
of major-general Massey, the valiant defender of Gloucester ; 
complaints of all kinds were got up against this body,§ and 
ultimately it was disbanded. In parliament, in the newspa- 
pers, in all public places, particularly in the army, the inde- 
pendents only spoke of the Scots with insult, now pointing out 
to public indignation their rapacity, now ridiculing their par- 
simony, addressing themselves, by a clumsy but efficacious 
trick, to national prejudices, to popular distrust, skilful to lose 
no opportunity of exciting anger and contempt against their 
enemies. II At last, the commons voted that the Scottish 
army was no longer required, and that on a hundred thousand 
pounds being given it on account, and a statement demanded 
of what more was due, it should be requested to return home 
(June ll).ir 

These measures had not the effect anticipated ; the Scots 
showed neither vexation nor anger ; but their conduct was 
hesitating, which suited their enemies still better. The per- 
plexity of the leaders inclined to serve the king was extreme. 
Incurable in his duplicity, because he held himself bound to 
no engagement with rebellious subjects, Charles meditated 
their ruin while he was imploring their aid. " I do not 
despair," he wrote to lord Digby, a few days before he left 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 469 ; Whitelocke, 204. 

t Whitelocke, 207, et seq. \. Pari. Hist., iii., 474—480. 

§ Whitelocke, 299, et seq |1 Holies, Memoirs, 45. 

ir Pari. Hist., iii., 484. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 327 

Oxford, " of inducing the presbyterians or the independents to 
join with me in exterminating one the other ; and then I shall 
be king again " (March 26).* On their side, the presbyterians, 
Scots or English, ruled by their ministers, passionately bent 
upon securing the covenant and the triumph of their church, 
would not hear of any accommodation with, any assistance to, 
the king, unless at that price ; so that the most moderate, 
those most anxious for the future, could neither trust in him, 
nor abate with him any of their claims. In this perplexity, 
assailed at once by the accusations of their adversaries and 
the necessities of their party, their words contradicted, their 
actions neutralized each other ; they wished for peace, pro- 
mised it to the king, were constantly talking with their friends 
of the dread they had of the independents ; and yet never had 
their declarations of zeal for the covenant, of firm attachment 
to parliament, of inviolable union with their brethren the 
English, been more multiplied, more emphatic ;"f" never had 
they shown themselves so distrustful, so inflexible in reference 
to the king and the cavaliers. Six of the most illustrious 
companions of Montrose, taken at the battle of Philiphaugh, 
were condemned and executed ; a severity for which there 
was no motive but revenge, and of which, in England, the 
civil war had presented no example. :j: Charles, before quitting 
Oxford, had written to the marquis of Ormond that he was 
only proceeding to the Scottish camp on the strength of their 
promise of supporting him and his just rights if need were 
(April 3) ;§ and though in all probability their language had 
not been so explicit as this, it can hardly be doubted that they 
had in fact given him reason to hope for their support. Or- 
mond published the king's letter (May 21) ; the Scots at once 
contradicted it, broadly characterizing it as " a most damnable 
untruth (June 8)."|| More rigor than ever was displayed about 
the king's person ; all who had carried arms in his defence were 
forbidden to approach him ; his letters were in almost every 
instance intercepted. IT At length, to give a signal mark of 
their fidelity to the cause of the covenant, the Scottish leaders 
called upon the king to allow himself* to be instructed in the 
true doctrine of Christ ; and Henderson, the most celebrated 

* Carte, Life of Ormond, ill., 452. t Pari. Hist, iii., 471, 473, 488. 
t Laing, iii., 834. § Carte, Life of Ormond, ill., 455 

II ParL Hist, iii., 480. IT Whitelocke, jja»«»n. 



328 HISTORY OF THE 



preacher of the party, went to Newcastle to undertake officially 
the conversion of the captive monarch.* 

Charles maintained the controversy with address and dig- 
nity, inflexible in his adherence to the Anglican church, but 
arguing without acrimony against his adversary, who was 
himself temperate and respectful. During the discussion, the 
king wrote to the royalist governors who still held out, order- 
ing them to surrender their towns (June 10) ;■]■ to the parlia- 
ment, to hasten the transaction of their proposals (June 10) ;:}: 
to Ormond, to continue his negotiations with the Irish, though 
at the same time he officially commanded him to break them 
off;§ to Glamorgan, still the only person entrusted with his 
secret designs, " If you can procure me a large sum of money, 
by engaging my kingdoms as security, I shall be glad, and as 
soon as I shall have recovered possession of them, I will fully 
repay the debt. Tell the nuncio that if I can by any means 
place myself in his and your hands, I shall certainly not fail 
to do so, for I see that all the rest contemn me" (July 20). || 

The proposals of parliament at last arrived (July 23) ; the 
earls of Pembroke and Suffolk, and four members of the com- 
mons, were charged to present them. One of them, Mr. 
Goodwin, began to read them ; " I beg your pardon," said 
the king, interrupting him, " have you any power to treat ?" 
"No, sir." " In that case, but for the honor of it, a good, 
honest trumpeter, might have done as much as you." Good- 
win finished reading the proposals. " I imagine," said the 
king, " you do not expect a present answer from me in a busi- 
ness of this consequence." '' Sir," replied lord Pembroke, 
" we have orders to stay no longer than ten days." " Very 
well," replied Charles, " I will give you an answer in proper 
time. "IT 

Several days passed and the commissioners heard nothing 
further. The king meanwhile read sadly, and re-read, again 
and again, these proposals, still more humiliating, still harder 
than those he had constantly rejected. He was called upon 

* The controversy began on the 29th of May, and lasted till the 16th 
of July. All the notes which passed between the king and Henderson 
have been collected in "The Works of King Charles the Martyr" 
(1662), 155—187. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 487. J lb., 486. § lb., 487 ; Lingard, vi., 561. 

II Birch, Inquiry into Glamorgan's Transactions, &c., 245. 

H Pari. Hist., iii., 513. 



EliGLISH KEVOLUTION. 329 

to adopt the covenant, to abolish completely the episcopal 
church, to surrender to parliament, for twenty years, the 
command of the army, navy, and militia ; and finally, to con- 
sent that his most faithful friends, to the number of seventy- 
one, excluded by name from any amnesty, that all his party, 
that whoever had taken arms for him, should be debarred 
all public employment during the pleasure of parliament.* 
Yet every one persuaded him to accept these terms : M. de 
Bellievre, the French ambassador, who had arrived at New- 
castle the same day with the parliamentary commissioners, 
counselled him, in the name of his own court, to do so.j- Mon- 
treuil brought him letters from the queen, ardently urging 
compliance ;:j: on the suggestion of Bellievre, she even dis- 
patched from Paris a gentleinan of her household, sir William 
Davenant, with orders to tell the king that his resistance was 
disapproved of by all his friends. " What friends ?" said 
Charles, pettishly. " By lord Jermyn, sir." " Jermyn does 
not understand anything about the church." " Lord Cole- 
pepper is of the same mind." " Colepepper has no religion ; 
is Hyde of this mind ?" " We do not know, sir ; the chan- 
cellor is not at Paris ; he has forsaken the prince, and has 
chosen to remain in Jersey, instead of accompanying the 
prince to the queen ; her majesty is very much offended by 
his behavior." " The chancellor is an honest man, who will 
never forsake me, nor the prince, nor the church ; I am sorry 
he is not with my son ; but my wife is mistaken." Davenant 
urged the point with the vivacity of a poet and the levity of 
a court gallant; the king grew angry, and drove him roughly 
from his presence. § On the part of the presbyterians, the 
entreaties were no less urgent ; several towns in Scotland, 
Edinburgh among others, addressed amicable petitions to the 
king 1 1 on the subject ; the city of London wished to do the 
same, but a formal prohibition from the commons prevented 
them. IT At last, threats were joined to entreaties ; the general 
assembly of the church of Scotland demanded that if the 
king refused the covenant, he should not be permitted to 
enter Scotland ;** and in a solemn audience, in presence of the 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 499—512. t lb., 512 ; Clarendon, ill., 47. 

t Whitelocke, 216. § Clarendon, iii., 48. 

il Whitelocke, ut sup. IT Ludlow, 79. 

** Clarendon, iii., 54. 

28* 



330 HISTORY OF THE 



Scottish commissioners, the chancellor, lord Lowden, declared 
to him, that if he persisted in his refusal, entrance into Scot- 
land would, in point of fact, be forbidden him, and that in 
England it was very likely they would depose him, and insti- 
tute another form of government.'*' 

The king's pride, his religious scruples, and also some se 
cret hope with which he was still buoyed up by credulous or 
intriguing friends,"|" were proof against these presentations. 
After having from day to day delayed his ansAver, he, on the 
1st of August, sent for the commissioners, and delivered to 
them a written message, in which, without absolutely rejecting 
the proposals, he again requested to be received in London to 
treat personally with the parliament.:]: 

The independents could not restrain their joy. On the re- 
turn of the commissioners, a vote of thanks to them was as 
usual proposed : " It is the king we should thank," cried a 
member. " What will become of us now he has refused our 
proposals ?" anxiously inquired a presbyterian. " What 
would have become of us if he had accepted them ?" replied 
an independent. § A message came from the Scottish commis- 
sioners offering to surrender all the places they occupied, and 
to withdraw their army from England (Aug 10). || The lords 
voted that their brethren the Scots had deserved well of the 
country ; the commons did not join in this vote, but passed a 
resolution by which it was forbidden to speak ill of the Scots 
or to print anything against them (Aug. 14). IT For a moment, 
both parties, the one disheartened, the other reassured by the 
king's refusal, seemed solely engaged in regulating in concert 
their interests and their discussions. 

But truces proclaimed by prudence or spite between adverse 
passions are of short duration. The offer of the Scots gave 
rise to two questions : how the arrears which were due to 
them and which they had been long claiming, were to be 
settled ? and who was to have the disposal of the king's per- 
son ? These questions once started, both parties renewed the 
conflict. 

On the first point, the presbyterians easily gained the ad- 

*Rushworth, i.,4, 319. f Ludlow, 79. J Pai-1. Hist, iii., 513— 516. 
§ Burnet, Memoirs of the Hamiltons, 283. || Pari. Hist., iii., 516. 
f lb. This ordinance only passed the commons by a majority of 130 
to 102. 



ENGLISH REVOLL-TION. 331 

vantage : the demands of the Scots, it is true, were exorbitant; 
after giving parliament credit for what it had already paid, 
they still claimed nearly 700,000Z., " without mentioning," 
they said, " the enormous losses which Scotland had suffered in 
consequence of her alliance with England, and of which they 
left the valuation to the equity of parliament.* The inde- 
pendents railed with their bitter irony against so expensive a 
fraternity ; in their turn, they opposed to the claims of the 
Scots a detailed account of the sums which had been levied 
by them, and of their exactions in the north of the kingdom, 
an account, according to which, Scotland, so far from having 
anything due to her, was more than 400,000Z. in debt to Eng- 
land. "j" But these recriminations could not be admitted or 
even seriously debated by sensible men ; the retirement of the 
Scots was evidently necessary ; the northern counties loudly 
called for it ; to obtain it they must be paid, for a war would 
be much dearer and far more perilous to parliament. The 
shuffling pertinacity of the independents seemed merely blind 
passion or factious manoeuvring ; the presbyterians, on the 
contrary, promised to bring the Scots to more moderate terms : 
all the wavering, distrustful, or reserved, who ranked under 
the banner of no party, Snd who several times, from dislike 
of presbyterian despotism, had given the independents a ma- 
jority, took on this occasion the side of their adversaries : 
400,000/. were voted as the maximum concession:}: the Scots 
could hope for, payable, one half on their departure from 
England, the other half at the expiration of two years. They 
accepted the bargain, and a loan, on mortgage of church pro- 
perty, was immediately opened in the city, to provide the 
means of payment (Oct. 13). § 

But when the question turned on the disposal of the king's 
person, the position of the presbyterians became very embar- 
rassing. Had they wished him to remain in the hands of the 
Scots, they could not even liave suggested such an idea, for 
the national pride absolutely repelled it ; it was the honor and 
right, was the universal cry, of the English people alone to 
dispose of their sovereign ; to what jurisdiction could the 

* Pari. Hist., ut sup. t lb. 

X In four votes of 100,000Z. each ; the 13th, 21st, ana 27th of August, 
and 1st of September. — Pari. Hist., ut sup. 
§ Rushworth, i., 4, 376 ; Holies, Memoirs, 66. 



332 HISTORY OF THE 



Scots lay claim on English ground ? They were nothing there 
but auxiliaries, paid auxiliaries, who, it was quite obvious, 
thought of nothing but their pay ; let them take their money, 
then, and return to their own country ; England neither want- 
ed nor feared them. The Scots, on their side, however great 
their desire to avoid a rupture, could not endure patiently all 
this contumely. Charles, they said, was their king as well 
as king of England ; they had, equally with the English, the 
right to watch over his person and his fortunes ; the covenant 
imposed this upon them as a duty. The quarrel became 
very animated ; conferences, pamphlets, declarations, recipro- 
cal accusations multiplied, and grew more vehement day after 
day ; day after day the people, without distinction of party, 
denounced more and more loudly the pretensions of the Scots, 
who had altogether fallen in popular opinion : national preju- 
dices and antipathies had reappeared ; and the rapacity of the 
Scots, their narrow-minded prudence, their theological pe- 
dantry, daily became more distasteful to the freer, more en- 
larged, and more liberal minds, the more extended and bolder 
fanaticism of their allies. The political leaders of the pres- 
byterian party. Holies, Stapleton, Glynn, weary of a struggle 
in which they found themselves straitened and subordinate, 
impatiently sought the means of putting an end to it. They 
persuaded themselves, that if the Scots gave the king into the 
hands of parliament, it would be easy to disband that fatal 
army, the only strength of the independents, the true enemy 
of the parliament and of the king. They therefore counselled 
the Scots to yield, for the interest of their own cause ; and, at 
the same time, the lords, probably determined by the same 
influence, at length agreed (Sept. 24) to this resolution of the 
coinmons which had been five months in suspense : " that to 
the parliament alone belongs the right of disposing of the 
king's person."* 

The Scottish presbyterians, most of them at least, were 
quite willing to believe in the wisdom of this counsel, and to 
follow it, embarrassed as they were by their own resistance, 
and not knowing how to maintain it nor how to give it up. 
But the king's friends among the party had lately acquired 
rather more boldness and power. The duke of Hamilton was 

* Rushworth, i., 4,329—372 ; Holies, Memoirs, 68 ; Baillie, ii., 257; 
Laing, iii., 369. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. .333 

at their head, after an imprisonment of three years at St. 
Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, whither he had been sent in 
consequence of the distrust which his wavering conduct had 
inspired at the court of Oxford, and in the mind of the king 
himself. He had quitted the place when it fell into the hands 
of the parliament, and after passing a few days in London, 
and paying cordial visits to the members of both houses, he 
had proceeded to Newcastle, where Charles had just arrived 
with the Scottish army, had soon regained his former favor 
with the king, and on his return to Edinburgh had made the 
most earnest efforts for his safety.* Around him immediately 
rallied nearly all the higher nobility of the kingdom, the citi- 
zens, the moderate presbyterians ; the prudent, who were dis- 
gusted with the blind fanaticism of the multitude and the 
insolent domination of its ministers ; the honest and timid, 
who were willing to make any sacrifice to obtain a little rest. 
These effected the appointment of a new and solemn deputa- 
tion, who went to Newcastle, and conjured the king, on their 
knees, to accept the proposals of parliament. The passionate 
entreaties of these deputies, all of them his fellow-countrymen, 
nearly all of them the companions of his youth, shook Charles's 
resolution : " Upon my word," he said to them, " all the dan- 
gers and inconveniences laid before me do not so much trouble 
me, as that I should not give full satisfaction to the desires of 
my native country, especially being so earnestly pressed upon 
me. I desire to be rightly understood : I am far from giving 
you a negative — nay, I protest against it, my only wish being 
to be heard, and hope you will press those at London to hear 
reason. If a king were to refuse this to any of his subjects, 
he would be thought a tyrant. "f The next day, possibly 
after fresh solicitations, he offered to limit the establishment 
of the episcopal church to five dioeeses,:j: allowing the presby- 
terian system to prevail in the rest of the kingdom, claiming 
only for himself and his friends of the same persuasion, the 
free exercise of their own conscience and worship, until, in 
conjunction with the parliament, he should put an end to all 
their differences. But no partial concession satisfied the pres- 
byterians ; and the higher offers the king made, the more they 

* Clarendon, iii., 152 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 327. 

t Rushworth, i., 4, 327. 

X Those of Oxford, Winchester, Bristol, Bath and Wells, and Exeter 



334 HISTORY OF THE 



doubted his sincerity. His proposal was scarcely listened to. 
Hamilton, discouraged, talked of retiring to the continent ; a 
report at the same time was spread, that the Scottish army 
was about to enter Scotland. The king immediately wrote to 
the duke (Sept. 26) : " Hamilton, I have so much to write, 
and so little time for it, that this letter will be suitable to the 

times, without method or reason. Those at London think 

to get me into their hands by telling our countrymen that they 
do not intend to make me a prisoner. O no, by no means ! — but 
only to give me an honorable guard forsooth, to attend me 
continually, for the secuiity of my person. Wherefore I 
must then tell you (and 'tis so far from a secret that I desire 
every one should know it), that I will not be left in England 
when this army retires, unless clearly, and according to the 
old way of understanding I may remain a free man, and that 
no attendant be forced upon me upon any pretence whatsoever. 
By going, you take away from me the means of showing my- 
self;" and he finished his letter with these words : " Your 
most assured, real, faithful, constant friend."* Hamilton re- 
mained ; the Scottish parliament met (November) : its first 
sittings seemed to announce a firm and active good-will to- 
wards the king. It declared (Dec. 16) that it would maintain 
monarchical government in the person and descendants of his 
majesty, as well as his just rights to the crown of England ; 
and that secret instructions should be sent to the Scottish com- 
missioners in London, to negotiate that the king might go 
thither with honor, safety, and liberty. But next day the per- 
manent committee of the general assembly of the presbyterian 
church addressed a public remonstrance to the Scottish parlia- 
ment, accusing it of listening to perfidious counsels, and com- 
plaining that it put the union of the two kingdoms, the only 
hope of the faithful, in peril, merely to serve a prince obsti- 
nate in rejecting the covenant of Christ.")" Against such 
intervention, Hamilton and his friends were powerless. The 
docile parliament retracted its vote of the preceding day ; and 
the moderate men could effect nothing beyond a fresh message 
to the king, entreating him to accept the proposals. Charles 
only answered by another message, requesting to treat in per 
son with parliament.:}: 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 327—329. t lb-. 390 ; Laing, iii., 364—368 

t Rushworth, i., 4, 393. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. 335 

At the very moment that, for the fifth time, he was express- 
ing this unavailing wish, parliament was signing the treaty 
regulating the retirement of the Scottish army, and the mode 
of paying it (Dec. 23).* The loan opened in the city had 
been immediately filled ; on the 16th of December, the 
200,000Z. which the Scots were to receive previous to their 
departure, enclosed in two hundred cases, sealed with the seal 
of the two nations, and conveyed in thirty-six carts,! left Lon- 
don, escorted by a body of infantry ; and Skippon, who com- 
manded It, issued an order of the day that any officer or soldier 
who by word or deed or otherwise, should give any Scottish 
officer or soldier subject of complaint, should forthwith be se- 
verely punished.:}: The convoy entered York on the 1st of 
January, 1647, the cannon of the town celebrating its arrival ;§ 
and three weeks after, the Scots received their first payment 
at Northallerton. The king's name was not mentioned in the 
course of this negotiation ; but a week after the treaty had 
been signed (Dec. 31),|| the two houses voted that he should 
be conveyed to Holmby Castle in Northamptonshire ; and he 
so undoubtedly formed part of the bargain, that the commons 
discussed the question whether commissioners should be sent 
to Newcastle to receive him solemnly from the Scots, or 
whether they should merely require him to be given up with- 
out any ceremony to Skippon, with the keys of the place and 
the receipt for the money. The independents strongly insisted 
upon the last mode, delighted with the idea of insulting at the 
same time the king and their rivals. But the presbyterians 
succeeded in rejecting it (Jan. 6, 1674) ;ir and on the 12th of 
January, nine commissioners, three lords and six members of 
the commons,** left London with a numerous suite, to go and 
respectfully take possession of their sovereign.ff 

Charles was playing at chess when he received the first in- 
timation of the vote of parliament and of his approaching re- 
moval to Holmby Castle ; he quietly finished his game, and 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 532—536. 

f Rushworth, i., 4, 389: Pari. Hist., iii., 533. t Whitelocke, 230 

§ Pari. Hist, ut sup. ; Drake, History of York (1736), 171. 

II Pari. Hist, 538. IT lb. 

** The earls of Pembroke and Denbigh, lord Montague, sir John 
Coke, sir Walter Earl, sir John Holland, sir James Harrington, Mr. 
Carew, and major-general Brown. 

tt Sir Thomai Herbert, Memoirs (1702), 7 



336 HISTOUY OF THE 



merely observed that on the arrival of the commissioners he 
would acquaint them with his will (Jan. 15).* Those about 
him manifested more anxiety ; his friends and servants looked 
around on all sides for some aid, some refuge, now meditating 
another flight, now attempting in some corner of the. kingdom 
to excite a fresh rising of the royalists in his favor.f Even 
the people began to show themselves touched by his fate. A 
Scottish minister, preaching before him at Newcastle, gave 
out the 51st Psalm, beginning with these words: 

" Why dost thou, tyrant, boast thyself 
Thy wicked works to praise ? " 

The king arose, and instead of this, began the 56th Psalm : 

" Have mercy, Lord, on me I pray, 
For men would me devour : " 

and with a common impulse, the whole assembly joined with 
him ;:j: but the pity of a people is tardy, and remains long 
without effect. 

The commissioners arrived at Newcastle (Jan. 22) ; the 
Scottish parliament had officially consented to surrender the 
king (Jan. 16). § " I am sold and bought," said he, when he 
heai'd of it. Yet he received the commissioners well, talked 
cheerfully with them, congratulated lord Pembroke upon hav- 
ing been able at his age, and in so severe a season, to inake 
so long a journey without fatigue, inquired the state of the 
roads, appeared, in short, anxious for them to think him glad 
to return to the parliament. || Before quitting him, the Scottish 
commissioners, lord Lauderdale in particular, the most clear- 
sighted of all, made a last attempt with him in favor of the 
covenant : " If he would but adopt it," they said, " instead of 
giving him up to the English, we will take him to Berwick, 
and obtain reasonable conditions for him." They even offered 
Montreuil, who still served as a mediator between them, a large 
sum of money if he could only obtain a promise from the king.lT 
Charles persisted in his refusal, but without complaining of the 

* Burnet's Memoirs of the Hamiltons, 307. 
t Pari'. Hist., ut sup. t Whitelocke, 230. 

§ Pari. Hist., iii., 541. I| Herbert, 8. 

IT Thurloe, State Papers, i., 87 ; Letter of M. de Montreuil to M. do 
Brionne, February 2, 1647. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 337 

conduct of the Scots towards him, treating the commissioners 
of both nations with equal civility, evidently anxious to avoid 
exhibiting either distrust or anger.* The Scots, wearied out, 
at length took their departure ; Newcastle was given up to 
the English troops (Jan. 30) ; and the king left it on the 9th 
of February, escorted by a regiment of horse. He travelled 
slowly ; all the way an eager crowd flocked to meet him ; 
persons afflicted with the king's evil were brought to him and 
placed round his carriage, or at the door of the house which 
he occupied, that he might touch them as he passed. The 
commissioners were alarmed, and forbade this concourse,']' but 
to little purpose, for no one was yet accustomed to oppress or 
to fear, and the soldiers themselves dared not drive back the 
people too roughly.:}: Approaching Nottingham, Fairfax, 
whose head-quarters were there, came out to meet the king, 
alighted as soon as he saw him, kissed his hand, and mounting 
his horse again, went through the town by his side in respect- 
ful conversation. " The general is a man of honor," said the 
king, when he left him, " he has kept his word with me ; "§ 
and two days after (Feb. 16) when he entered Holmby, where 
a great many gentlemen and others of the neighborhood had 
met to celebrate his arrival, he highly congratulated himself 
on the reception he had received from his subjects. || 

At Westminster even, the presbyterians conceived some dis- 
quietude at all this, but it soon gave way to the joy of finding 
themselves masters of the king, and free at length boldly to 
attack their enemies. Charles arrived at Holmby on the 16th 
of February ; and on the 19th the commons had already voted 
that the army should be disbanded, excepting such part of it 
as might be required for the Irish war, the service of the gar- 
rison and the police of the kingdom. IT Fairfax himself was 
near being deprived of the command of the troops retained ;** 

* Thurloe, State Papers, i., 87 ; Letter of M. de Montreuil to M. de 
Brionne, February 2, 1647, 

t By a declaration published at Leeds, February 9, 1647 ; Pari. Hist., 
iii., 549. 

t Herbert, 10. 

§ Whitelocke, 238. It is not known to what promise Charles alluded ; 
perhaps to that of receiving him and talking with him as Fairfax did. 

11 Herbert, 10. 

IT Pari. Hist, iii., 558. This motion was adopted by 159 to 147. 

** The motion was rejected by a majority of only 12, 159 to 147. — 
Pari. Hist., ut sup. 
29 



338 HISTORY OF THE 



and, though he was left in possession of it, it was decreed, that 
no member of the house could serve with him, that he should 
have under his command no officer above the rank of colonel, 
and that they should all be bound to conform to the presby- 
terian church, and to adopt the covenant.* On their side, the 
lords, to relieve, as they said, the counties round London, the 
most devoted of all to the public cause, requii'ed that the army, 
pending its dismissal, should take up its quarters at a greater 
distance from the metropolis (March 24. )f A loan of 200,000/. 
was opened in the city to pay the disbanded troops a portion of 
their arrears.:}: Finally, a special committee, on which sat 
nearly all the presbyterian leaders. Holies, Stapleton, Glynn, 
Maynard, Waller, was ordered to superintend the execution 
of these measures, and in particular to hasten the departure of 
those succors which the unfortunate Irish protestants had so 
long been expecting. § 

The attack was not unforeseen : for the last two months the 
independents had felt their influence decline in the house, for 
most of the new members, who at first had acted with them, 
from a dread of presbyterian despotism, were beginning to 
turn against them.|| " What misery," said Cromwell one day 
to Ludlow, " to serve a parliament ! let a man be ever so true, 
if a lawyer calumniate him he can never recover it ;"'whereas, 
in serving under a general, one is as useful, and there is 
neither blame nor envy to dread ; if thy father were alive he 
would soon let some of them hear what they deserve. "IT A 
sincere republican, and as yet a stranger to the intrigues of 
his party, though he fully shared their passions, Ludlow did 
not understand his friend's meaning, and did not meet his 
advances ; but others were more easily deceived and seduced. 
Cromwell had already, in the army, several able accomplices 
and blind instruments ; Ireton, who shortly after became his 
son-in-law, a man bred to the law, but now commissary-gene- 
ral of the cavalry, of a firm, obstinate, and subtle spirit, ca- 
pable of carrying on silently, and with deep cunning, the 
boldest designs, veiled under an appearance of rough honesty ; 
Lambert, one of the most brilliant officers of the army, ambi- 
tious, vain, and who, like Ireton, brought up to the law, had 

* This motion was adopted by 136 to 108.— Id., ib. f Id., ib. 

t Rush worth, i., 4, 449. § Holies, Mem., 75 ; Rushworth, ut sup. 
II Id., ib. IT Ludlow, 79. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 339 

retained of his studies a power of insinuation, a readiness of 
speech, which he liked to make use of with the soldiers ; 
Harrison, Hammond, Pride, Rich, Rainsborough, all of them 
colonels of tried valor, popular, and personally attached to 
him : Harrison, because in pious meetings they had sought 
the Lord together ; Hammond, because he was indebted to 
him for his marriage with a daughter of Hampden ;* the 
others, because they felt the ascendency of his genius, or ex- 
pected their rise with his, or simply obeyed him as soldiers. 
By their means, Cromwell, though, the war being over, he had 
resumed his seat at Westminster, maintained all his influence 
in the army, and from a distance exercised there his indefati- 
gable activity. As soon as the disbanding of the troops was 
talked of, these men in particular were loud in their murmurs ; 
it was to them that, from London, news, insinuations, sugges- 
tions were sent, which they immediately circulated underhand 
throughout the army, exhorting the soldiers to insist upon the 
payment of the whole of their arrears, to refuse to serve in 
L'eland, to avoid disunion among themselves. Cromwell, 
meanwhile, to disarm suspicion apparently inactive, was con- 
stantly deploring from his place in the house the discontent 
of the army, and pouring forth protestations of his devotion to 
parliament. f 

First came a petition signed only by fourteen officers 
(March 25),:]: written in an humble and conciliatory tone. 
They promised to go to Ireland at the first orders, and con- 
tented themselves for the present with ofiering modest counsel 
as to the payment of arrears and the guarantees that the 
troops had a right to expect. The house thanked them, but 
haughtily intimated that it became none to direct parliament 
what to do.§ As soon as this answer reached the army, 
another petition was instantly prepared, far more firm and 
definite than the first. It demanded that the arrears should 
be strictly liquidated ; that no one should be obliged to go to 
Ireland against his will ; that disabled soldiers and the widows 
and children of soldiers should receive pensions ; that prompt 
payments on account might relieve the troops from becoming 
a burden on the people among whom they were quartered. 
It was no longer by a few individuals, but in the name of the 

* Clarendon, iii., 118. t Holies, Memoirs, 84. 

X Pari. Hist., iii., 560. § lb., iii., 562. 



340 HISTORY OF THE 



whole body of officers and soldiers, that the petition was 
drawn up ; and it was addressed, not to Parliament, but to 
Fairfax, the natural representative of the army and guardian 
of its rights. It was read at the head of each regiment, and 
such officers as refused to sign it were threatened.* 

Upon the first intelligence of these proceedings, parliament 
commanded Fairfax to prohibit them, declaring that whoever 
should persist in them would be considered an enemy of the 
state and disturber of the public peace ; it further required 
certain of the officers to attend the house and explain their 
conduct. f 

Fairfax promised obedience : Hammond, Pride, Lilburne, 
and Grimes went to Westminster (April 1), and loudly re- 
pelled the charges brought against them : " It is not true," 
said Pride, " that the petition was read at the head of each 
regiment ;" it was at the head of each company that it had 
been read ; the house did not press the matter further — it was 
sufficient, they said, that the petition was abandoned and 
disavowed.:]: 

The preparations for disbanding the army were resumed : 
the loan opened in the city went on slowly, and was not 
enough ; a general tax of 60,000?. a-month was imposed to 
make up the amount. § Above all, the formation of the corps 
destined for Ireland was hastened : great advantages were 
promised to those who would enlist in them ; and Skippon 
and Massey were appointed to command them.|| Five com- 
missioners, all of the presbyterian party, proceeded to head- 
quarters to make these resolutions known. 

On the day of their arrival (April 15), two hundred officers, 
assembled in the house of Fairfax, entered into conference 
with them : " Who will command us in Ireland ?" asked 
Lambert. " Major-general Skippon and major-general Mas- 
sey are appointed." " The great part of the army," replied 
Hammond, " will readily follow major-general Skippon, which 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 562—567; Whitelocke, 241. 

t This declaration was made on the 30th of March, 1647 ; Pari. 
Hist., iii., 567. 

X Rushworth, i., 4, 444. 

§ The ordinance, proposed in the beginning of April, was not defi- 
nitely adopted till the 23d of June following. (Rushworth, 1., 4, 582.) 
The tax was voted for one year. 

II Rushworth, i., 4, 452. 



ENSLISH REVOLUTION. 34i 

otherwise they would not ; they know the worth and valor 
of that great soldier ; but they must also have the general 
ofTicers of whom they have had such experience." "Yes, 
yes," cried the officers ; " give us Fairfax and Cromwell, and 
we will go." The commissioners, quite disconcerted, left 
the room, requesting that all the well-disposed would come to 
them at their lodgings. Scarcely more than twelve or fifteen 
accepted the invitation.* 

A few days after (April 27),-j- a hundred and forty-one 
officers addressed a solemn justification of their conduct to 
parliament : " We hope, by being soldiers," they said, " we 
have not lost the capacity of subjects, nor divested ourselves 
thereby of our interests in the commonwealth ; that in pur- 
chasing the freedom of our brethren, we have not lost our 
own. For our liberty of petitioning, we hope the house will 
never deny it to us, as it has not denied it to its enemies, but 
justified and commended it, and received misrepresentations 
of us. The false suggestions of some men have informed you 
that the army intended to enslave the kingdom : we earnestly 
implore your justice to vindicate us, and that our hardly, 
earned wages may be cared for, according to our great neces- 
sities, more especially those of the soldiers." 

The house had scarcely finished reading this letter (April 
30), when Skippon rose, and delivered another, which had 
been brought to him the day before by three private soldiers. 
In it eight regiments of horse expressly refused to serve in 
Ireland. It was, they said, a perfidious design upon them 
and many of the godly party, a pretext to separate the soldiers 
from the officers they loved, and to conceal the ambition of a 
few men who had long been servants, but who having lately 
tasted of sovereign power, were now, in order to remain 
masters, degenerating into tyrants. At this personal attack, 
the presbyterian leaders, alike astonished and irritated, de- 
manded that the house, laying aside all other business, should 
summon before it and question the three soldiers. They 
came ; their demeanor was firm, their deportment unembar- 
rassed.:]: " Where was this letter got up ?" inquired the 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 457; Whitelocke, 244. 
\ Pari. Hist, iii., 568 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 469—472. 
J Their names were Edward Sexby, William Allen, and Thomas 
Sheppard. 

29* 



342 HISTORY OF THE 



speaker. " At a meeting of the regiments." " Who wrote 
it?" "A council of delegates appointed by each regiment." 
"Did your officers approve of it?" "Very few of them 
know anything about it." " Do you know that none but 
royalists could have suggested such a proceeding ? You your, 
selves, were you ever cavaliers ?" " We entered the service 
of parliament before the battle of Edge-hill, and have re- 
mained in it ever since." One of the three stepped forward : 
" I received, on one occasion, five wounds ; I had fallen ; 
major-general Skippon saw me on the ground ; he gave me 
five shillings to get relief; the major-general can contradict 
me if I lie." " It is true," said Skippon, looking with interest 
at the soldier. " But what means this sentence in which you 
speak about sovereign power ?" " We are only the agents 
of our regiments ; if the house will give us its questions in 
writing, we will take them to the regiments and bring back 
the answers."* 

A violent tumult arose in the house ; the presbyterians 
broke out into threats. Cromwell, leaning towards Ludlow, 
who was sitting next to him, said, " These men will never 
leave, till the army pull them out by the ears."f 

Anger soon gave way to uneasiness ; the discovery just 
made was an alarming one ; it was no longer discontented 
soldiers whom they had to repress ; the whole army was 
banded together, was erecting itself into an independent, 
perhaps rival power, had already its own government. Two 
councils, composed the one of officers, the other of delegates 
or agitators, named by the soldiers, regulated all its proceed- 
ings, and were preparing to negotiate in its name. Every 
precaution had been taken to keep up this growing organiza- 
tion ; every squadron, every company named two agitators ; 
whenever it was necessary for them to meet, every soldier 
gave fourpence to defray the expenses, and the two councils 
were never to act but in common.:]: At the same time, a re- 
port was spread, and not without foundation, that proposals 
had reached the king from the army ; it was said that it 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 474 ; Holies, Memoirs, 89 ; Whitelocke, 249. 
t Ludlow, 81. 

t Rushworth, i., 4, 485; Fairfax, 106; Holies, ut sup.; Ludlow, 
ut sup. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 843 

oifered to re-establish him in his just rights,* if he would 
place himself at its head and under its care. In parliament 
itself, at the manifestation of this new power, and dreading 
its immediate strength still more than its triumph, the more 
cautious members became timid ; some left London ; others, 
like Whitelocke, sought the favor of the generals, of Crom- 
well in particular, who eagerly met their advances. f It was 
resolved to try the effect of compliance, and to treat with the 
army through its own leaders. Two months' pay, instead of 
six weeks', as first voted, was promised to the troops who 
were to be disbanded (May 14) ;:{: an oi'dinance was drawn 
up for a general amnesty for all disorders and illegal acts 
committed during the war ;§ and funds were assigned to 
assist the widows and children of soldiers. || Finally, Crom- 
well, Ireton, Skippon, Fleetwood, all the generals who were 
members of the commons, and who were acceptable to the 
army, were charged to re-establish harmony between it and 
the parliament. IF 

A fortnight passed without their presence at head-quarters 
appearing to produce any effect. They wrote often, but 
their letters contained nothing : sometimes the council of 
officers had refused to answer without the concurrence of 
the agitators ; sometimes the agitators themselves had re- 
quested time to consult the soldiers.** Every day, and under 
the eyes of the commissioners of parliament, this hostile 
government acquired more consistency and power. Yet 
Cromwell ceased not to write that he was exhausting him- 
self in futile efforts to appease the army, that his own influ- 
ence was greatly suffering in consequence, and that he him- 
self should soon become an object of suspicion and odium to 
the soldiers. -ff Some of the commissioners at length returned 

* Proposals of this nature had in fact been made to the king by some 
officers in the beginning of April ; Charles rejected them. — Clarendon, 
State Papers, ii., 365. 

t Whitelocke, 248. J Rushworth, i., 4, 484. 

§ lb. The ordinance was definitively adopted on the 21st of May — 
Ibid.,4S9. 

II Holies, 91. 

IT They went to the head-quarters at Saffron Walden, in Essex on the 
7th of May, 1647. 

** Rushworth, i., 4, 4S0, 485, 487 ; Huntingdon, Memoirs (1702), 152. 

tt Clarendon, iii., 357, &c. 



344 HISTORV OF THE 



to London, bringing from the army the same proposals on the 
one hand, the same refusals on the other.* 

The presbyterian leaders had expected this ; and profiting 
by the disposition of the house, which had hoped for better 
things, obtained in a few hours the adoption of more decided 
resolutions. On a motion of Holies, it was voted that the 
troops which would not enlist for Ireland, should be instantly 
disbanded ; all the details of this measure were arranged, the 
day, the place, the means. The corps wei'e to be dissolved 
suddenly, separately, each in its quarters, almost at the same 
time, or at very short intervals, so that they might neither 
concert nor assemble together. The money necessary to carry 
out the first acts of the operation was forwarded to different 
points, and commissioners, all of them presbyterians, were 
sent to superintend its execution. •]" 

They found the army in the most violent confusion : in- 
formed of the blow which threatened them, most of the regi- 
ments had mutinied ; some, expelling such officers as they 
distrusted, had of their own authority put themselves in 
motion, with colors flying, to join their comrades ; others had 
entrenched themselves, armed and equipped, in churches, 
declaring that they would not disperse ; some had seized the 
money destined to pay the disbanded troops ; all clamorously 
demanded a general meeting, in which the whole army might 
be heard ; and a letter was immediately addressed to Fairfax 
(May 29) in the name of the soldiers, saying, that if their 
officers refused to lead them, they well knew how to meet 
without them and defend their own rights. Fairfax discon- 
certed, afflicted, exhorted the officers, hearkened to the soldiers, 
wrote to paiiiament, alike sincere and alike uninfluential with 
all parties, equally incapable of resigning popularity or ex- 
ercising power. At last he called a council of war (May 26), 
and the officers, with only six exceptions, voted the resolutions 
of parliament were not satisfactory, that the army could not 
disperse without better securities, that it should draw its quar- 
ters nearer together ; that a general meeting should take place 
to calm the fears of the soldiers ; and that an humble represen- 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 491. 

t Rushworth, i., 4, 493, 494, 496; Pari. Hist, iii., 5S2 ; Holies, 
Memoirs, 125. These resolutions were adopted by the house of lords 
on May 22, 1647. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION* " 845 

tation from the council should inform the parliament of all that 
had taken place.* 

No illusion was longer possible ; its authority thus braved, 
parliament could no longer suffice to itself; it required against 
such enemies some other strength than its name, some other 
support than the law. This could only be given it by the 
king, on one hand, or by the city, still altogether presbyterian, 
and very near becoming royalist, on the other. Some 
measures had already been taken with this view ; by the 
consent of the common council, the command of the militia 
had been taken from the independents and transferred to a 
committee of presbyterians jf a more numerous guard had 
been placed round the doors of parliament ;:|: 12,000Z. addi- 
tional had been assigned for their maintenance ; crowds of the 
cashiered officers, the faithful remnant of Essex's army, so- 
journed freely in the city. To the great regret of the party, 
Essex himself was no more ; he had died almost suddenly, at 
the latter end of the preceding year (Sept. 14), on his return 
from a hunting party, just at the time when it was said he 
was preparing to make a signal effort in favor of peace ; and 
his death had seemed to the presbyterians so terrible a blow 
that a rumor was spread of his having been poisoned by his 
enemies. But Waller, Poyntz, Massey were full of zeal, and 
all ready to declare themselves. As to the king, parlia- 
ment might very well fear that he did not entertain towards 
them a feeling much more favorable than before ; twice, 
with the hard bigotry of theological hatred, they had 
refused him the attendance of his chaplains (Feb. 19 and 
March 8) ; and two presbyterian ministers, Messrs. Marshall 
and Caryll, solemnly celebrated their own form of worship, 
at Holmby, though Charles constantly refused to attend ;§ his 
most trusty servants had been removed from him ;|| every 
attempt to correspond with his wife, his children, or his 
friends, was strictly prevented ;*[[ it was with great difficulty 
that one of the commissioners of the Scottish parliament, lord 
Dunfermline, obtained permission to converse with him (May 
13) ;** finally, he had (May I2)ff addressed to parliament a 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 596; Pari. Hist, iii., 5S5 ; Holies, 126. 

t By an ordinance of the 4th of May, 1647 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 472, 478 

i lb., 496. § Pari. Hist., iii., 557—550; Herbert, 11. || lb., 13. 

IT Rushworth, i., 4, 453, 482. 

•♦ Rushworth, i., 4, 483. > ft Pari. Hist., iii., 577—581. 



34e6 HISTORY OF THE 



detailed answer on the proposal he had received at Newcastle, 
and more than a fortnight had elapsed without any disposition 
being manifested to take it into consideration. After so much 
and such vexatious rigor, a reconciliation seemed difficult. 
Yet the necessity of the case was urgent ; if the king had 
reason to complain of the presbyterians, he still knew that 
they did not desire his utter ruin. Even at Holmby, though 
so strictly watched, the usual honors of royalty were observed 
towards him ; his household was maintained with splendor, 
the ceremonies of the court exactly adhered to ; on the part 
of the resident commissioners, who were all presbyterians, 
nothing in their deportment was wanting in etiquette and 
respect, and they accordingly lived upon very good terms 
together ; sometimes the king invited them to accompany him 
in his walks, sometimes he played at chess or ai bowls with 
them, always treating them with marked attention, and seek- 
ing their society.* Assuredly, they thought, he could not be 
ignorant that the enemies of parliament were also his own, 
nor refuse the only means of safety that was now offered him. 
The lords voted (May 20)f that his majesty should be invited 
to reside near London, in Oatlands Castle ; the commons, 
without joining in the vote, manifested the same wish ; the cor- 
respondence with the resident commissioners, particularly with 
colonel Greaves, the commandant of the garrison, became 
active and mysterious : already at Westminster and in the 
city, every one was indulging in the hope that the king would 
soon unite with his parliament, when, on the 4th of June, the 
news arrived that the day before the king had been taken from 
Holmby by a detachment of seven hundred men, and was 
now in the hands of the army. 

And so it was ; on the 2d of June, as the king was playing 
at bowls, after dinner, on Althorpe Down, two miles from 
Holmby, the commissioners who accompanied him remarked 
with astonishment, among those standing by, a stranger in the 
uniform of Fairfax's regiment of guax'ds. Colonel Greaves 
asked him who he was, whence he came, what was talked of 
in the army ; the man answered somewhat abruptly and 
haughtily, as if conscious of his own importance, yet without 
impertinence. Soon afterwards, a report circulated round the 

*Herbert, 12. i Pari. Hist, iii., 581. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 847 

king that a numerous body of horse was approaching Holmby ; 
" Did you hear of them ?" said Greaves to the stranger. " 1 
did more than hear, I saw them yesterday not thirty miles off." 
This caused great alarm ; all immediately returned to 
Holmby ; some preparations were made to resist an attack ; 
the garrison promised to remain faithful to the parliament. 
Towards midnight, a body of horse arrived under the walls 
of the castle, and demanded entrance. " Who is your com- 
mander ?" inquired the commissioners. " We all command," 
was the reply. One of them came forward, the same who 
had been seen a few hours before on Althoi'pe Down : " My 
name is Joyce," said he ; "I am a cornet in the general's 
guard ; I want to speak to the king." " From whom ?" 
" From myself." The commissioners laughed. " It's no 
laughing matter," said Joyce ; " I come not hither to be 
advised by you ; I have no business with the commissioners ; 
my errand is to the king, and speak with him I must and will 
presently." Greaves and major-general Brown, one of the 
commissioners, ordered the gan*ison to hold themselves in 
readiness to fire ; but the soldiers had talked with the new 
comers, the portcullis was lowered, the gates opened, and 
Joyce's men were already in the castle-yard, alighting from 
their horses, shaking hands with their comrades, saying they 
were come by order of the army to place the king in safety, 
as there was a plot to carry him off, take him to London, raise 
other troops, and begin a second civil war ; and colonel 
Greaves, commandant of the garrison, they added, had en- 
gaged to accomplish the treachery. On hearing this, the 
soldiers exclaimed that they would not forsake the army ; 
Greaves disappeared, and made his escape in all haste. After 
a few hours' conference, the commissioners saw that all hope 
of resistance must be given up. It was noon ; Joyce took 
possession of the castle, posted sentinels about it, and then 
retired till evening to give his men some repose. 

He returned at ten, and requested to be taken to the king. 
" The king is in bed," was the answer. " I don't care," said 
he, " I have waited long enough ; I must see him ;" and, 
with a cocked pistol in his hand, he caused himself to be con- 
ducted to the apartment occupied by Charles. " I am sorry," 
said he, to the gentleman in attendance, " to disturb the rest 
of his majesty ; but I cannot help it j I must needs speak with 



348 HISTOKY OF THE 



him, and that at once." He was asked whether he was 
authorized by the commissioners. " No ; I have put guards 
at their doors, and my orders come from men who do not fear 
them." They urged him to lay aside his arms, but he abso- 
lutely refused. Some hesitation was shown to open the door ; 
he grew angry. The king, awakened by the quarrel, rang, 
and gave orders that he should be admitted. Joyce entered, 
uncovered, but his pistol slill in his hand, and with a deter- 
mined though not insulting air. The king, in the presence 
of the commissioners, whom he sent for, had a long conference 
with him, and then dismissed him, saying : " Good night, Mr. 
Joyce ; I will readily go with you, if your soldiers confirm all 
you have promised me." 

Next morning, at six, Joyce's men were drawn up on horse- 
back in the castle yard. The king appeared at the top' of the 
stairs, followed by the commissioners and his servants. Joyce 
came forward. " Mr. Joyce," said the king, " I must ask 
you, by what authority you pretend to seize me and take me 
from this place ?" " Sir, I am sent by authority of the army, 
to prevent the designs of its enemies, who would once more 
plunge the kingdom in blood." " This is no legal authority ; 
I acknowledge no other in England than my own, and after 
mine, that of the parliament. Have you a written warrant 
from sir Thomas Fairfax ?" " I have orders from the army, 
and the general is comprised in the army." " That is no 
answer ; the general is at the head of the army ; have you a 
written warrant ?" "I beg that your majesty will question 
me no further ; 1 have already said enough." " Come, Mr. 
Joyce, be frank with me ; tell me, where is your commis- 
sion ?" " There it is, sir." " Where ?" " There." " But 
where ?" " There, behind me ;" and he pointed to his sol- 
diers. " Believe me," said the king, smiling, *' your instruc- 
tions are written in very legible characters ; 'tis truly a fair 
commission ; you have a company of as handsome, proper 
gentlemen as I have seen a great while. But you must know 
that, to take me hence, you must employ force, if you do not 
promise I shall be treated with respect, and that nothing shall 
be required of me against my conscience or my honor." 
" Nothing ! nothing !" exclaimed all the soldiers. " We 
should be most unwilling," said Joyce, " to force men to act 
against their conscience, much less your majesty." " Now, 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 349 

gentlemen, for the place you intend to have me to ?" "To 
Oxford, sir, if you please." " No, the air is not good," 
"Then to Cambridge." "No, I would rather go to New. 
market ; it is an air that always agreed with me." " As you 
please, sir." As the king was retiring, the commissioners 
advanced a few steps towards the troop : " Gentlemen," said 
lord Montague, " we are here in trust from both houses, and 
desire to know whether you all agree to what Mr. Joyce has 
said ?" " All, all !" " Let those," said major-general 
Brown, " who wish the king should remain with us, say so." 
" None, none !" was the reply. Their powerlessness thus 
manifested, the commissioners submitted ; three of them got 
into the carriage with the king, the others mounted their 
horses, and Joyce gave the word to march.* 

A messenger was despatched at the same moment to Lon- 
don, bearing a letter in which Joyce announced to Cromwell 
that all had succeeded. If he did not find Cromwell in Lon- 
don, the messenger was to deliver the letter to sir Arthur 
Haslerig, and, in his absence, to colonel Fleetwood. It was 
Fleetwood who received it ;f Cromwell was at head-quarters, 
with Fairfax, who was greatly troubled when he heard what 
had taken place. " I do not like it," he said to Ireton ; " who 
gave such orders ?" " I ordered," replied Ireton, " that the 
king should be secured at Holmby, but not that he should be 
carried away." " It was quite necessary," said Cromwell, 
who at that moment arrived from London, " or the king would 
have been taken, and had back to parliament." Fairfax at 
once sent colonel Whalley with two regiments of horse to 
meet the king, and take him back to Holmby ; Charles re- 
fused to return, protesting against the violence to which he 
had been subjected, but, in reality, well pleased to change his 
prison, and that discord prevailed among his enemies. Two 
days after, Fairfax himself, and all his staff, Cromwell, Ire- 
ton, Skippon, Hammond, Lambert, and Rich, presented them- 
selves to him (June 7) at Childersley, near Cambridge. Most 
of them, Fairfax being the first, respectfully kissed his hand ; 
Cromwell and Ireton alone kept apart. Fairfax protested to 
the king that he had known nothing about his removal. " I 

* Rushworth, i.,4, 502, 513—517 ; Pari. Hist, ill., 58S— 601 ; Her- 
bert, 17—24 ; Ludlow, 82. 

t Holies, Memoirs, 97 ; Huntingdon, Memoirs, 312. 
30 



350 HISTORY OF THE 



will not believe it," said Charles, " unless you have Joyce 
forthwith hanged."* Joyce was summoned : " I told the 
king," said he, " that I had no warrant from the general ; I 
acted by order of the army ; let the army be assembled ; if 
three parts of them do not approve of what I have done, I 
consent to be hanged at the head of my regiment." Fairfax 
talked of having him tried by a court-martial, but to no pur- 
pose. " Sir," said the king to him, when he left him, " I 
have as good interest in the army as you ;" and he desired to 
be taken back to Newmarket. Colonel Whalley here took 
up his quarters with him ; Fairfax returned to head-quarters, 
and Cromwell to Westminster, where, for the last four days, 
all had been wondering at his absence. f 

He found both houses a prey to sudden alternations of an- 
ger and fear, decision and weakness. The first news that the 
king was carried off caused general dismay ; Skippon, whom 
the presbyterians persisted in regarding as one of their party, 
moved, in a lamentable tone, that a solemn fast should be or- 
dained, to obtain from the Lord the restoration of harmony 
between the parliament and the army ; and meanwhile it was 
voted, on the one hand, that a considerable sum on account of 
arrears should be advanced forthwith, and, on the other, 
that the declaration which had treated the first petition from 
the officers as seditious, should be rescinded and erased from 
the Journals (June 5).:}: Further information, however, by 
exciting indignation, restored some degree of courage to the 
parliament ; they received from the commissioners details of 
what had taken place at Holmby ; they became acquainted 
with the letter from Joyce to Cromwell ; they even thought 
they knew exactly on what day, at head-quarters, in a confer- 
ence between some officers and the principal agitators, this 
audacious coup-de-main§ had been planned and decided upon 
at Cromwell's instigation. When the lieutenant-general re- 
appeared in the house, their suspicions were given utterance 
to ; he repelled with vehemence, calling God, angels, men to 
witness, that up to that day Joyce was as unknown to him as 

* Huntingdon, Memoirs, 153. 

t Rushworth, i.,4, 545, 549; Herbert, 25; Warwick (1701), 299, 
Fairfax, 116. 

i Pari. Hist, iii., 592, 597; Holies, Memoirs, 132. 
§ According to Holies, 96, it was on the 30th of May. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 351 

the light of the sun to the unborn child.* None the less for 
that, the conviction of Holies, Glynn, and Grimstone, re- 
mained unshaken, and they sought everywhere for proofs, 
resolved to take the first opportunity of moving his arrest. 
One morning, a little before the house met, two officers waited 
upon Grimstone. " Not long since," said they, " was dis- 
cussed, in an assembly of officers, whether it would not be 
well to purge the army, so as to have there only men in whom 
confidence could be placed ; ' I am sure of the army,' Crom- 
well said, on the occasion, ' but there is another body which 
it is far more urgent to purge, the house of commons — and 
the army alone can do this.' " " Will you repeat these words 
to the house ?" asked Grimstone. " We are ready to do so," 
answered the officers ; and they accompanied him to West- 
minster. The house was sitting : a debate was begun : " Mr. 
Speaker," said Grimstone, as soon as he entered, " I move 
that this debate be adjourned ; I have a much more urgent mat- 
ter to put to it, a far graver question, a question affecting our 
liberty, our very existence ;" and he forthwith charged Crom- 
well, who was present, with intending to employ the army 
against the parliament. " My witnesses are here," he said ; 
" I move that they be admitted." The two officers came, 
and repeated their statement. They were no sooner with- 
drawn than Cromwell arose, and, falling on his knees, after 
a passion of tears, with a vehemence of sobs, words, and ges- 
tures that filled the whole assembly with emotion or asto- 
nishment, poured forth invocations and fervent prayers, in- 
voking upon his head every curse of God, if any man in the 
kingdom was more faithful than he to the house. Then, 
rising, he spoke for more than two hours of the king, the 
army, of his enemies, of his friends, of himself; touching 
upon and mixing up all things ; humble and audacious, ver- 
bose and impassioned, earnestly repeating, again and again, 
that he was unjustly assailed, compromised without reason ; 
that, with the exception of a few men whose eyes were 
turned towards the land of Egypt, officers and soldiers, all 
were devoted to him, and easy to keep under his command. 
In a word, such was his success, that when he sat down, the 
ascendency had altogether gone over to his party, and " if 

• Harris, Life of Crornwell, 97, in the note. 



352 HISTORY OF THE 



he had pleased," as Grimstone himself said, thirty years 
afterwards, "the house would have sent us to the Tower, 
me and my officers, as calumniators."* 

But Cromwell was too wise to be eager for revenge, too 
clear-sighted to deceive himself respecting the real value of 
his triumph. He immediately saw that such scenes could not 
be repeated, and the very same evening secretly left London, 
joined the army assembled at Tripole Heath (June 10),"]* near 
Cambridge, and laying aside towards the presbyterians and 
the house that disguise which he felt could no longer be main- 
tained, even with his hypocrisy, placed himself openly at the 
head of the independents and the soldiers. 

A few days after his arrival, the army was on its march to 
London ; a solemn engagement to maintain their cause to the 
last had been subscribed by all the regiments ; under the title 
of an humble refresentaiion, they had addressed to parliament 
(June 14), no longer merely the picture of their own griev- 
ances, but the haughty expression of their views as to public 
affairs, the constitution of parliament, the elections, the right 
of petition, the general reform of the state.:]: Finally, to these 
unprecedented demands was joined a project of impeachment 
against eleven members of the commons, Holies, Stapleton, 
Maynard, &c.,§ the enemies of the army, as they said, and 
the sole cause of the fatal mistakes into which parliament had 
fallen respecting it. 

The presbyterians had foreseen the blow, and sought before- 
hand to shield themselves against it. For the last fortnight 
they had been using every effort to excite in their favor the 
people of the city : complaints had been made of the taxes on 
salt and meat : they were abolished (June 11 and 25) ;1| the 
apprentices had protested against the suppression of religious 
festivals, particularly that of Christmas, hitherto always a pe- 
riod of merriment all over England : days of public recreation 
were appointed to take their place (June 8) ;1[ there was still 

* Burnet, i., 77. f Holies, 99. % Rushworth, i., 4, 564. 

§ Denzil Holies, sir Philip Stapleton, sir William Lewis, sir John 
Clotworthy, Sir William Waller, sir John Maynard, Glynn, Anthony 
Nichols, major-general Massey, and colonels Waller, Long and Harley 
(ib., 570). 

II Whitelocke, 252 ; Rushworth, i. 4, 592. 

IT Pari. Hist., iii., 594; Whitelocke, 251—254; Rushworth, i. 4, 
4(50, 548. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 353 

a general clamor against the rapacity of a crowd of members, 
the accumulation of offices, indemnities, profits on sequestra- 
tions ; the commons voted that no member should henceforth 
accept any lucrative office, or gift, or assigneeship of the 
estates of delinquents, and even that they should return into 
the public treasury the sums they had already received, and 
that their lands should be subjected to the common law for the 
payment of their debts (June 10) ;* lastly, the committee 
which had been appointed to receive the complaints of citizens, 
had fallen into disuse ; it was reinstated on a more vigorous 
footing (June 3).f 

But the day was come in which concessions were no longer 
a proof of anything but distress, and in which parties only 
acknowledged their faults to expiate them. The city detested 
the independents, but feared them ; towards the presbyterian 
chiefs it felt a devotion devoid of respect or confidence, as 
towards decried and vanquished masters. For awhile these 
measures seemed to produce some effect : the common coun- 
cil declared their firm design to support parliament (June 10) ;:[: 
a few squadrons of citizens were formed ; the militia were 
recruited ; the disbanded officers came in crowds to inscribe 
their names at Massey's, Waller's, and Holles's ; prepara- 
tions for defence were made round London ;§ parliament 
voted (June 11) that the army should be called upon to retire, 
suri'ender the king to its commissioners, and that his majes- 
ty should be requested to reside at Richmond under the protec- 
tion of parliament alone (June 15). || But the army conti- 
nued to advance. Fairfax wrote in its name to the common 
council (June 11 and 14),1I complaining of their allowing 
men to be recruited against it. The council sent an unmean- 
ing reply, assigning its fears as an excuse, and protesting that 
if the army would retire, and consent to remain quartered 
forty miles from London, all dissensions would soon cease 
(June 12 and 15).** Fairfax answered, that this letter came 
too late ; that his head-quarters were already at St. Albans, 
and that a month's pay was absolutely necessary. ff Parlia- 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 603 : Whitelocke, 255. f Rushworth, i., 4, 500. 
t Pari. Hist., iii., 600 ; Whitelocke, 251. 
§ Rushworth, i., 4, 552, &c. ; Pari. Hist., iii., 614. 
II Pari. Hist., iii., 614. IT lb., 608—628. 

** Rushworth, i., 4, 557 ; Pari. Hist, iii., 630. 
ft Rushworth, i., 4, 560 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 613. 
30* 



354 KISTOKY OF THE 



ment voted the pay, and insisted upon a retrograde movement 
(June 15 and 21.)* The army required that the eleven mem- 
hers, its enemies, should first be expelled from parliament 
(June 23). j" The commons could not resolve to deal them- 
selves, with their own hands, so heavy a blow ; the point had 
already been several times brought under discussion, but the 
majority had always answered that a vague accusation, with- 
our facts to support accusations, without proofs to make out 
the facts, could not deprive members of parliament of their 
rights. :j: " The first accusation against lord Strafford," urged 
the army, " was also vague and entirely general ; as you did 
then, we will do now, furnish our proofs afterwards ;"§ and 
it still advanced. On the 26th of June its head-quarters were 
at Uxbridge. The city dispatched commissioners to it, but 
with no effect. The alarm increased every day ; already the 
shops were kept shut, and the eleven members were bitterly 
animadverted upon for an obstinacy so deeply compromising 
for parliament and the city. They readily understood this 
language ; and offered themselves to retire. Their devotion 
was accepted with eager gratitude (June 26) ;|| and the very 
day of their retirement, the commons voted that they adopted 
all the proceedings of the army, would provide for its support, 
that commissioners should be appointed to regulate in concert 
with those of the army the affairs of the kingdom ; that in the 
meantime the king should be requested not to come to Rich- 
mond as it had lately been desired, and that in any case he 
should not reside nearer London than the head-quarters of the 
army.TT On these conditions Fairfax drew back a few miles, 
and appointed ten commissioners to treat with those of parlia- 
ment (June 30 and July 1).** 

When the king heard of these resolutions, he was preparing 
to set out for Richmond, according to the desire of parliament, 
or at least to attempt to do so, for since that wish had been 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 631—639. t lb., 640—650. ' 

t Holies, 119, &c. ; Pari. Hist., iii., 653. § Rushworth, i., 4, 594. 

II Pari. Hist., iii., 654; Holies, 124; Clarendon, State Papers, ii., 
App., xxxviii. ' 

IT Pari. Hist., iii., 656. 

** Rushworth, i., 4, 596 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 661. The commissioners 
appointed by the army were, Cromwell, Ireton, Fleetwood, Rainsbo- 
rough, Harrison, sir Hardress Waller, Rich, Hammond, Lambert, and 
Desborough. 



ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. 355 

expressed, he had been the object of the closest surveillance, 
had been dragged, as it were, from town to town after the 
army, and at every halting-place found a number of guards 
placed round his lodgings. He had manifested great indig- 
nation at this : " Since my parliament," he said, " asks me to 
go to Richmond, if any one offers to prevent me, it must be by 
force and by seizing my bridle-rein ; and for him that may 
dare attempt this, it shall not be my fault if it be not the last 
action of his life."* When he learned that the parliament 
itself opposed his departure, that it had conceded everything 
to the army, and was negotiating v/ith it as with a conqueror, 
he smiled contemptuously at this humiliation of his first ad- 
versaries, and hastened to give another direction to his in- 
trigues. Save the measures taken to prevent his escape, he 
had no matter of complaint against the army ; the officers 
were as respectful towards him and far more complaisant than 
the commissioners of parliament. Two of his chaplains, doc- 
tors Sheldon and Hammond, had been allowed to live with 
him, and freely to do spiritual duty according to the rites of 
the episcopal church ; his old servants, even the cavaliers who 
had been lately in arms, were no longer indiscriminately for- 
bidden access to him • the duke of Richmond, the earl of 
Southampton, the marquis of Hertford, obtained leave to visit 
him ; the leaders of the army seemed to take great pleasure 
in showing the royalist noblemen that they were capable of 
tempering power with generosity ; and even in the inferior 
ranks, the military spirit repelled those minute precautions, 
those petty rigors, from which, at Newcastle and Holmby, the 
king had so often been a sufferer. j" Since the surrender of 
Oxford, his youngest children, the duke of York, the princess 
Elizabeth, and the duke of Gloucester, had resided either at 
St. James's Palace or Sion House, near London, under the 
charge of the earl of Northumberland, to whom parliament 
had entrusted them. Charles expressed a wish to see them,- 
and Fairfax at once urged the request officially upon parlia- 
ment. " Who, if he can imagine it to be his own case," he 
said, " cannot but be sorry if his majesty's natural affection to 
his children, in so small a thing, should not be complied 
with ?":{: The interview took place (July 15) at Maidenhead, 

* Huntingdon, Memoirs. t Herbert, passim. 

JHis letter was of the 8th of July ; Pari. Hist, iii., 679. 



356 HISTORY OF THE 



amidst a large concourse of people, who strewed with ever- 
greens and flowers the roads by which the royal family came 
to meet each other ; and far from conceiving any anger or 
distrust at this, officers and soldiers, touched, in common with 
the people, by the happiness of the father at the sight of his 
children, permitted him to take them with him to Caversham, 
where he then resided, and keep them for two days.* Some 
of them, moreover, Cromwell and Ireton in particular, too 
cleai'-sighted to flatter themselves that their struggle with the 
presbyterians was at an end and their victory secure, felt, on 
calculating all the chances, uneasy respecting the future, and 
considering the various aspects which the approaching crisis 
might assume, put it to one another whether the favor of the 
king restored to authority by their hands, would not be the 
best security for their party, the surest means of fortune and 
power for themselves."]* 

The rumor of this disposition of things, of the attentions 
paid by the army to the king, of the advances made to him 
by some of its leaders, soon spread throughout the kingdom. 
The conditions offered him were even stated, and pamphlets 
were circulated, some praising, others blaming the army. 
The leaders thought it necessary officially to contradict these 
reports, and even to demand, in a tone of anger, the punish- 
ment of their authors (July l).j^ But the negotiations with 
the king were none the less continued. The officers were 
respectful, courteous, assiduous in their attentions ; familiar, 
almost friendly intercourse was established between them and 
the cavaliers, as between men who, having honorably fought 
each other, now only desired to live in peace. The king him- 
self wrote to the queen on the subject with some confidence, 
and the new hopes soon became the sole topic of conversation 
with the few emigrants who had followed her to Paris, or had 
sought refuge in Normandy, at Rouen, Caen, or Dieppe. Two 
men, in particular, occupied themselves in spreading the in- 
telligence abroad, carefully making it appear that they knew 
more about the matter than they thought fit to explain, and 
that no one could render in this affair such important services 
to the king as themselves. One of them, sir John Berkley, 
had valiantly defended himself in Exeter, and had not sur- 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 625 ; Clarendon, iii., 86. 

t Huntingdon, Memoirs, 155. J Pari. Hist., ut sup. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 357 

rendered the place till three weeks before the king fled to the 
Scottish camp ; the other, Ashburnham, had only quitted the 
king at Newcastle, to escape the effects of the animosity borne 
him by parliament ; both vain, boasting intriguers, Berkley 
with most courage, Ashburnham more crafty, and possessing 
more influence over the king. Berkley, by chance, Ash- 
burnham, by order of Charles himself, had had some cor- 
respondence with a few of the principal officers, enough, in 
their opinion, to boast of and profit by. The queen received 
all their assurances without hesitation ; and by her orders, in 
the beginning of July, they both set out, a few days after each 
other, to present themselves to the king and the army as ne- 
gotiators.* Berkley was no sooner landed, than a cavalier of 
his acquaintance, sir Allen Apsley,"]" came to meet him, sent 
by Cromwell, Lambert, and some others, to assure him that 
they had not forgotten their conversation with him after the 
taking of Exetei', nor his excellent counsels, and that they 
were ready to benefit by them, and pressed him to hasten. 
On receiving this message, proud to find himself of more im- 
portance than even he himself had imagined, Berkley, stop- 
ping but a moment in London, pressed on to head-quarters, at 
this time at Reading. He had only been there three hours, 
when Cromwell sent to apologize for not being able to visit 
him at once : and the same day, at ten in the evening, Berkley 
heard Cromwell, Rainsborough, and sir Hardress Waller an- 
nounced. All three made protestations of their good in- 
tentions towards the king, Rainsborough drily, Cromwell with 
expressions of deep feeling : " I have just witnessed," said he, 
" the most touching spectacle, the interview of the king with 
his children ; no one has been more deceived than I about his 
majesty ; he is, I am now sure of it, the best man in the three 
kingdoms ; for our parts, we are infinitely indebted to him ; we 
had been ruined, utterly undone, had he accepted the pro- 
posals of the Scots at Newcastle. May God deal out his 
goodness to me according to the sincerity of my heart towards 
his majesty !" According to him, the officers were all con- 
vinced that if the king did not resume possession of his just 
rights, no man in England could enjoy in security his life and 
property ; and a decisive step on their part would soon leave 

* Clarendon, iii., 81, f Mrs, Hutchinson's brother. 



358 HISTORY OF THE 



no doubts on his majesty's mind of their true sentiments. 
Berkley, perfectly delighted, procured next morning an au- 
dience of the king, and gave him an account of this interview. 
Charles received it coldly, as one who had often received 
similar overtures, and put no trust in them, or wished, at all 
events, by his reserve, to have his belief purchased at a valua- 
ble rate. Berkley retired confounded, but thinking, not with- 
out some resentment, that the king, who knew him but little, 
perhaps entertained some prejudice against him, and that Ash- 
burnham, who would shortly arrive, would be more success- 
ful. Meanwhile, he continued his negotiations with the army j 
the officers crowded around him, and even the common agi- 
tators, some the friends and creatures of Cromwell, others who 
mistrusted him and advised Berkley to be on his guard against 
him — " For," said they, " he is a man on whom no one can 
rely, and who changes his conduct and language every day 
to every person, wholly absorbed with the desire of being at 
all events, let what may occur, the leader of the successful 
party." Ireton, however, Cromwell's most intimate confidant, 
seemed to Berkley to act with perfect fairness and candor; he 
communicated to him the proposals that the general council 
of officers was preparing, and even adopted some alterations 
that he suggested. Nothing so moderate had hitherto been 
offered to the king : they required that he should give up for 
ten years the command of the militia and the nomination to 
the great offices of state : that seven of his councillors should 
remain banished from the kingdom : that all civil and coercive 
power should be withdrawn from the presbyterian bishops and 
ministers ; that no peer created since the outbreak of the war 
should be allowed to take his seat in the house ; that no cavalier 
should be admitted a member of the next parliament. " It is 
necessary," said Ireton, " that some difference should exist 
and appear between the conquered and the conquerors." But 
to these conditions, much less exacting than those of parlia- 
ment, was not added the obligation of abolishing the episcopal 
church, nor that of ruining the majority of the royalists by 
enormous fines, nor the legal interdiction, so to speak, of the 
king and his party during the pleasure of the parliament. 
On the other hand, the army, it is true, required reforms not 
previously demanded, and, in reality of a still graver character : 
a more equal distribution of electoral rights and of public 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 359 

taxation ; a change in the civil procedure, the abolition of a 
crowd of political, judicial, and commercial privileges ; in a 
word, the introduction into the social system, and into law, of 
priciples of equality hitherto unknown. But even in the 
thoughts of the proposers, it was not against the king, his 
dignity or power, that these demands were directed ; none 
deemed prerogative interested in the maintenance of rotten 
boroughs, the scandalous profits of the lawyers, or the frauds 
of a few debtors. Berkley, accordingly, looked upon these 
conditions as characterized by unhoped-for lenity ; never, in 
his opinion, had a crown so nearly lost been recovered at so 
cheap a rate. He solicited and obtained leave to communicate 
them privately to the king (about July 2.5), before they were 
officially presented by the army. His astonishment was still 
greater than at their first interview ; Charles considered the. 
conditions very hard, and spoke of them indignantly : " If 
they really wished to come to terms with me," he said, "they 
would make propositions that I could accept." Berkley ven- 
tured to make a few observations, and to urge the danger of a 
refusal : " No," said the king, abruptly breaking off the con- 
versation, " without me these people cannot extricate them- 
selves ; you will soon see them too happy to accept more 
equitable conditions."* 

Berkley was endeavoring in vain to find out the grounds 
for such confidence, when the news reached head-quarters 
that the most violent insurrectionary excitement prevailed in 
the city, that bands of citizens and apprentices were constant- 
ly besieging Westminster-hall, that it was expected every 
hour parliament would be obliged to vote the return of the 
king and the re-admission of the eleven members, resolutions 
most fatal to the army and its party. For the last fortnight, 
especially since a leave of absence for six months (July 20)f 
sent to the eleven members had deprived their party of all 
immediate hope, symptoms more and more threatening, mobs, 
petitions, tumultuous cries, gave announcement of this explo- 
sion ; a measure which was regarded on both sides as decisive, 
caused it to burst forth. The presbyterian committee, en- 
trusted for the last two months with the direction of the Lon- 
don militia, was dissolved, and the independents regained pos- 

* Berkley, Memoirs. 

t Pari. Hist, iii., 712 ; Rushworth, i., 4, 628. 



360 HISTORY OF THE 



session of that important position (July 25). The city could 
not resign itself to be thus represented and commanded by its 
enemies ; in a few hours the excitement became general ; a 
paper posted up in Skinner's-hall, containing an engagement 
to use every effort to accomplish the king's return in honor 
and liberty to London, was instantly covered with an im- 
mense number of signatures ; upon the departure of the 
courier for head-quarters, copies of it were dispatched all over 
England ; a petition was drawn up demanding for it the sanc- 
tion of parliament ; the disbanded officers united with the 
people ; everything announced a movement as general as en- 
ergetic* 

The army immediately marched towards London (July 
23) ; Fairfax wrote threatening letters in its name ; in parlia- 
ment, the independents, strengthened by this support, declared 
all persons who should subscribe the engagement of the city 
to be traitors (July 24). But these threats came too late to 
repress public excitement ; on the second day after this decla- 
ration, early in the morning, numerous groups of apprentices, 
disbanded officers, and watermen, pressed around the doors of 
Westminster-hall ; noisy, abusive, and evidently come with 
some daring design. On taking their seats (July 26), the 
alarmed commons ordered the doors to be closed, and that no 
member should leave without permission. A petition was 
then presented from the common council, in moderate and 
respectful terms, requesting that the command of the militia 
should be restored to the leaders from whom it had just been 
withdrawn, and informing parliament of the impatience of the 
people, but without any appearance of a desire to intimidate. 
While the house was discussing this petition, the speaker 
received notice that the multitude outside had another to pre- 
sent ; two members went out to receive it ; it was read imme- 
diately. It expressed the same feelings as that of the com- 
mon council, in language much more temperate than had been 
anticipated. But the debate continued, and no answer was 
returned ; the day was drawing to a close ; the multitude, 
instead of growing tired, became irritated ; it took possession 
of all the avenues to the house ; already the tumult of feet 
and voices rang through the hall ; cries of " Let us go in ! 

• Pari. Hist, iii., 713; Rushworth, i., 4, 635 ; Holies, 144, &c. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 361 

let US go in ! " were heard, and violent blows shook the door. 
Several members drew their swords, and for a moment drove 
back the assailants. The house of peers was equally me- 
naced ; some apprentices climbed up to the windows, and 
hurled stones through them, quite ready to proceed to greater 
extremities if they were not heard. The members in either 
house resisted for a while : at last, the door of the commons 
was broken open ; the most furious of the rioters, to the num. 
ber of forty or fifty, rushed in, and with their hats on, and the 
most menacing gestures, supported by the crowd pressing 
behind them, exclaimed : " Vote, vote ! " Parliament gave 
way ; the declaration of the preceding day was revoked, and 
the militia again placed under the direction of the presbyte- 
rian committee. The tumult seemed at an end ; the members 
rose to depart, the speaker had left the chair ; the mob seized 
him, and made him resume it. " What do you require fur- 
ther ? " asked he. " That the king be desired to come to 
London forthwith." The proposition was immediately put to 
the vote and adopted ; Ludlow alone opposed it by a firm and 
loud "No."* 

At this news, an excitement nearly as great arose in the 
army, particularly in the lower ranks, among the agitators 
and soldiers ; on all sides, the king was charged with perfidy, 
with being an accomplice in what had taken place. Lord 
Lauderdale, who had come from London to confer with him 
on the part of the Scottish commissioners, gave rise to so much 
distrust, that one morning before he was up a party of soldiers 
abruptly entered his bed-room and obliged him to depart im- 
mediately, without again seeing the king.']' Ashburnham, 
who had arrived three days before, increased their displeasure 
and suspicions by his scornful insolence ; he refused all 
intercourse with the agitators : " I have always lived in the 
best company," said he to Berkley ; " I cannot converse with 
such fellows as these : if we could gain the officers sure to 
the king, through them we shall have the whole army ; and I 
shall therefore apply myself wholly to them.":}: Even among 
those officers who had made advances to the king, several 
now began to hold themselves apart : " Sir," said Ireton, 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 717, &c. ; Rushworth, i., 4, 640—644; Ludlow, 
88 

t Rushworth, ii., 4, 737. t Berkley, 34. 

31 



362 HISTORY OF THE 



" you assume to be arbiter between the parliament and us ; it 
is we who will be arbiters between you and the parliament."* 
Yet, still uneasy as to what was passing in London, they 
resolved formally to present their proposals to him (Aug. 1). 
Ashburnham and Berkley were present at the conference. 
Charles was cold and haughty, listened with an ironical smile 
to the reading of the proposals, rejected almost all of them in 
few words and a bitter tone, as if sure of his strength, and 
well-pleased to manifest his displeasure. Ireton roughly sup- 
ported them, saying that the army would make no further con- 
cessions. Charles interrupted him abruptly : " You cannot 
be without me ; you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you." 
The officers looked at Ashburnham and Berkley with asto- 
nishment, as if to inquire the meaning of such a reception ; 
Berkley, in his turn, sought by his anxious looks to warn the 
king of his imprudence, but without success. At last, ap- 
proaching him, he whispered in his ear : " Your majesty 
speaks as if you had some seci'et strength and power that I do 
not know of; and since your majesty hath concealed it from 
me, I wish you had concealed it from these men too." Charles 
perceived he had said too much, and hastened to soften his 
language ; but the officers, most of them, at least, had already 
taken their resolution; Rainsborough, indeed, the most op- 
posed of them all to any accommodation, had silently left the 
room, to inform the army that it was impossible to trust the 
king ; and the conference ended in a dry, listless manner, as 
between persons who could no longer agree, nor longer de- 
ceive one another.f 

The officers had scarcely returned to head-quarters when 
several carriages arrived from London ; and to the great 
astonishment of the crowd, more tlian sixty members of both 
houses alighted from them,^ having at their head their two 
speakers, lord Manchester and Mr. Lenthall, who explained 
that they had just escaped from the fury of the mob, and had 

* Berkley, 34. f lb., 35. 

{The number is very, uncertain ; Holies positively mentions eight 
lords, and fifty-eight members of the commons ; Rushworth (ii., 4, 750) 
speaks of fourteen lords and about one hundred members of the com- 
mons ; this is also the statement of Whitelocke (263). The call of the 
house made in the upper house, on the 30th of July, indicates the ab- 
sence of twenty lords. — Pari. Hist., iii., 727. All the fugitives did n^t 
leave London together. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 363' 

come to the army for safety and freedom. The joy of the 
army was equal to its surprise : it had dreaded a violent rup- 
ture with parliament, but now it was the parliament itself, 
with its legal chiefs, its faithful members, which sought its 
protection. Officers and soldiers surrounded the fugitives, 
listened with indignation to the recital of the dangers and 
insults they had been subjected to, were profuse in thanks, in 
expressions of devoted respect, and praised the Lord for in- 
spiring them with so patriotic a resolution. With Cromwell 
and his friends all this surprise was feigned ; for the last five 
days, by agents in London, particularly by the intervention 
of St. John, Vane, Haslerig, and Ludlow, they had been labor- 
ing to produce this secession.* 

Berkley hastened to communicate this melancholy news to 
the king, conjuring him on the instant to address a letter to 
the leaders of the army which should give them hopes of a 
better reception for their proposals, or which should at least 
disarm suspicion, and lessen the ill effect of the late interview. 
This, he said, was the advice of Cromwell and Ireton, who, 
on this condition, still answered for the disposition of the 
army. But Charles had also received news from London : 
the riot had taken place by his contrivance and consent, and 
he now learned that on the very day the fugitive members 
departed, the members, who remained, a large majority, had 
elected two new speakers ; the commons, Mr. Pelham, the 
peers, lord Willoughby of Parham ; that the eleven proscribed 
members had resumed their seats, and that parliament thus re- 
organized had immediately sent orders for the army to stop 
where it was, had directed the city to prepare every means 
of defence, and Massey, Brown, Waller, and Poyntz to raise 
regiments with all speed. The zeal of the people in London, 
it was said, was very great : at a meeting of the common 
council, thousands of apprentices presented themselves, and 
swore to do their utmost for the crown, against whatever dan- 
ger, against whatever enemies. The inhabitants of South- 
wark alone had manifested opposite sentiments ; but as they 
were bringing up their petition to Guildhall, Poyntz, followed 
by a few officers, drove them back so roughly, that assuredly 
they would not venture to make another attempt. Money 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 723—731 ; Rushworth, 1., 4, 646; Ludlow, Mem. 
88, &c. 



364 HISTORY OF THE 



was levied, cannon placed on the ramparts. Finally, the 
king was formally invited to return to London ; and this vote, 
proclaimed by sound of trumpet in every street, was to reach 
him within a few hours, or at the latest next day.* 

" I shall wait," said the king to Berkeley ; " there will be 
time enough to write this letter." Meantime, a messenger 
arrived from head-quarters ; fresh fugitives from Westminster 
had come to join their colleagues ; others had written that 
they should retire into the country, and disavow this pre- 
tended parliament. Even in London, the independents, few 
in number but determined, lost neither time nor courage ; 
they thwarted, delayed, and weakened every measure they 
could not absolutely prevent ; the money collected was but 
slowly employed ; Massey's recruits were without arms ; a 
few presbyterian preachers, Mr. Marshall among others, gained 
over by the army, exerted themselves with the people to 
arouse their fears and to inspire them with a desire for recon- 
ciliation ; worthy members of parliament and of the council, 
already listened to them, flattered by the idea of having the 
honor to re-establish peace. In a word, Cromwell sent word 
to Ashburnham that within two days the city would be in 
their power. f 

Charles still hesitated ; he assembled his most confidential 
servants ; the letter was composed, debated, thrown aside, 
resumed ; at length he signed it (Aug. 4).:j: Ashburnham 
and Berkley set off with it to head-quarters ; they met on the 
road a second messenger, dispatched by two officers, friends 
of theirs, to urge its transmission with the least possible delay ; 
they arrived. The submission of the city had arrived before 
them. The fugitive members had just reviewed the army on 
Hounslow Heath (Aug. 3), amidst immense acclamations ; it 
was marching with them at its head towards London, certain 
of entering it without obstacle. The king's letter and alliance 
were no longer of any value to conquerors. § 

On the second day after, the 6th of August, a brilliant and 
formidable procession set out from Kensington for Westmin- 
ster j three regiments composed the vanguard, a fourth the 

* Rushworth, i., 4, 652—656 ; Paii. Hist., iii., 728. 

t Berkley, 38 ; Ludlow, 90. f Rushworth, ii., 4, 753. 

§ Berkley, 39 ; Rushworth, ii., 4, 750. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 365 

rear ; between them rode Fairfax and his staiF on horseback, 
the fugitive members in their carriages, and behind them a 
multitude of their partisans, eager to share their triumph. A 
double rank of soldiers lined the road, all with branches of 
laurel in their hats, and shouting, " Long live the parliament ! 
the free parliament !" At Hyde park they found the lord 
mayor and aldermen come to compliment the general on the 
re-establishment of peace between the array and the city ; 
Fairfax scarcely answered them as he passed. Further on, 
at Charing-cross, the common council in a body presented 
themselves in like manner, and had an equally unfavorable 
reception. Arrived at Westminster, it was discovered that 
most of the presbyterian leaders were flown, or had concealed 
themselves ; Fairfax re-established the friends of the army in 
their seats, listened with an air of modesty to their pompous 
thanks, heard a month's pay voted for his troops, and then 
went to take possession of the Tower, of which he had just 
been appointed governor.* 

Two days after, Skippon in the centre and Cromwell in the 
rear, the whole army marched through London, grave, silent, 
in the strictest order ; no excesses were committed, not one 
citizen received the slightest insult ;f the leaders desired at 
once to reassure and to awe the city. They did not fail in this 
object : at the sight of those armed men, so disciplined though 
so haughty in their mien, so obedient, yet so threatening, the 
presbyterians shut themselves up in their houses, the inde- 
pendents everywhere resumed possession of power, the timid 
crowded with eager confidence round the conquerors. The 
common council solicited Fairfax and his officers to accept a 
public dinner. He refused ; they only the more hastened the 
chasing of a golden ewer to be offei'ed to him.ij: There was 
even a certain number of apprentices who came to offer him 
their congratulations, and he received them in a formal 
audience, delighted to make it appear that among these 
dreaded youths also, the army had its partisans. § On their 
part, both houses, the lords more especially, made a servile 
parade of their gratitude, and voted that all that had been 
done during the absence of the members who had sought a 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 756 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 736, &c. ; Holies, 169. 
t Ludlow, 90. t Rushworth, ii., 4, 761—764 ; Holies, 220. 

§ Rushworth, ii., 4, 778. 
31* 



366 HISTOEY OF THE 



refuge with the army, was of itself null and void, without 
any special repeal (Aug. 6).* This vote disquieted the com- 
mons ; they were ready to prosecute the authors of the riot 
which had caused the secession ; but most of the members 
who had remained at Westminster had taken a part in those 
acts which they were now called upon to declare absolutely 
void ; three times they refused to yield this point (Aug. 10 
and 19). f Next day (Aug. 20), a troop of horse encamped 
in Hyde park • troops were stationed round the house, at every 
avenue to it ; within, Cromwell and Ireton supported with 
menaces the resolution of the lords ;:|: it was at length adopted ; 
and nothing was now wanting to the triumph of the army, for 
even those who had been subjected by it, proclaimed its le- 
gitimacy. 

After this great and facile success, the revolutionary move- 
ment, hitherto restrained or regulated, even among the inde- 
pendents, by the necessities of the struggle, soared freely ; 
each man's passions, hopes, and dreams became bold, and 
openly declared themselves. In the higher ranks of the party, 
in the house of commons, in the general council of officers, 
republican projects came forth plain and positive : already, 
for some time past. Vane, Ludlow, Haslerig, Martyn, Scott, 
and Hutchinson, had scarcely answered when any one ac- 
cused them of hostility to monarchy ; they now openly spoke 
of it with contempt ; the principle of the sovereignty of the 
people, and, in the name of the people, one sole assembly 
appointed by the people, now guided all their actions and 
words ; in their conversations, any idea of accommodation 
with the king, no matter upon what terms, was treated as 
treason. In the ranks below them, among the people as well 
as in the army, the excitement of men's minds was as general 
as it was intense ; in everything, reforms till then unheard of 
were demanded, on all sides reformers rose up ; to their wild 
desires no law imposed respect, no fact seemed an obstacle ; 
all the more confident and imperious, in proportion to the 
profoundness of their ignorance and obscurity, their petitions, 
their pamphlets every day poured foi'th, hurled menace in all 

*Parl. Hist.,iii., 745. 

t The proposition was rejected by 96 to 93, 85 to 83, and 87 to 84 ; 
Pari. Hist., iii., 756—773. 

X Holies, Memoirs, 172; Pari. Hist, iii., 758—773. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 367 

directions. Summoned before the judges, they brought the 
judges themselves in question, and ordered them to leave seats 
they had usurped ; attacked in the churches by the presbyte- 
rian ministers, they rushed to the pulpit, dragged from it the 
preachers, and preached in their place, sincere in the very 
ravings they made use of to serve their passions. No power- 
ful and entii'e theory, no precise and general plan presided 
over this movement ; all of them republicans, these popular 
champions carried their thoughts and wishes far beyond a 
revolution in the government ; they aimed at changing society 
itself, the relations, manners, and feelings of the community ; 
but in all this their views were narrow and confused ; some 
spent their daring in merely prosecuting some important but 
partial innovation, such as the abolition of the privileges of 
the lords or the lawyers ; others were content with some 
pious dream, such as expecting the approaching reign of the 
Lord ; others, under the name of rationalists, claimed abso- 
lute sovereignty for each man's reason ;* others talked of in- 
troducing a strict equality of rights and property, and these, 
their enemies nick-named levellers. But neither this decried 
name, which they always vehemently rejected, nor any other, 
was appropriate to them ; for they neither formed a sect 
devoted to a systematic beliefj nor a faction eager to advance 
towards a definite end. Citizens or soldiers, visionaries or 
demagogues, felt a desire of innovation, earnest but without 
any plan ; vague instincts of equality, above all, a rude spirit 
of independence ; such were their common characteristics ; 
and inspired by an ambition short-sighted but pure, perfectly 
intractable by all whom they deemed weak or self-interested, 
they constituted in turn the strength and the terror of the dif- 
ferent parties, all successively compelled to make use of and 
to deceive them. 

No one had succeeded as well in doing the one and the 
other as Cromwell ; no one enjoyed as he did the confiding 
intimacy of those obscure but powerful enthusiasts. Every- 
thing in him had found favor in their eyes ; the irregular 
outbursts of his imagination, his eagerness to make himself 
the equal and the companion of the rough and boorish, his 
language at once mystic and familiar, his manners by turns 

* Clarendon, State Papers, ii., Appendix 11. 



368 HISTORY OF THE 



commonplace and exalted, giving him at one time the air of 
an inspired preacher, and at others that of a plain peasant, 
even that free and supple genius which seemed to place at the 
service of a holy cause all the resources of mundane ability. 
He had sought and found among them his most useful agents, 
Ayres, Evanson, Berry, Sexby, Sheppard, Wildman, all 
leading members of the council of agitators, all ever ready 
at a word from the lieutenant-general to stir up the army 
against king or parliament. Lilburne himself, the most un- 
manageable and least credulous of these men, who had quitted 
his regiment because he could not obey, had the greatest 
confidence in Cromwell : " I have looked upon you," he wrote 
to him, " as among the powerful ones of England, as a man 
with heart perfectly pure, perfectly free from all personal 
views ;"* and Cromwell more than once had made use of Lil- 
burne's courage against the presbyterians. But when the 
ruin of the latter seemed accomplished, when the independents 
held in their power the king, the parliament, and the city, 
when all the revolutionary passions and desires burst forth, 
insatiable, blind, ungovernable, the situation of the leaders of 
the party, that of Cromwell in particular, already the object 
to whom all men's attention was turned, became affected. In 
their turn, they incurred distrust and felt fear. Many of their 
own party had viewed with disapprobation the negotiations 
entered into with the king ; necessity alone, the danger of 
falling within the power of the presbyterians, had dominated 
disgust and kept suspicions under constraint. Now all this 
necessity had disappeared ; the Lord had given into the hands 
of his servants all his enemies. Yet instead of securing and 
perfecting the triumph of His cause, the conqueror continued 
to live in friendship with, to treat with the delinquents. The 
first, the most culpable of all, the one on whose head a few 
of the faithful had already, for two years,"!" been invoking 
public vengeance, and who lately, in his insane pride, had 
rejected proposals which ought perhaps never to have been 
made to him, the king, far from losing anything by the late 
events, had almost regained by them his power and splendor. 
With the consent of the generals, he had returned to his 

* Letter of March 25th, 3647. 

t As early as May, 1646, a few independents had demanded the pun- 
ishment of the king, as the greatest delinquent. — Baillie, ii., 209. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 369 

palace of Hampton Court (Aug. 24), and resided there amid 
idolatrous pomp, surrounded by a court more arrogant than 
ever. His former councillors, Richmond, Hertford, Capel, 
Southampton, had hastened to rejoin him, as if he were about 
to reassume the exercise of sovereign power.* Ormond him- 
self, the most dangerous leader of the royalists in Ireland, he 
who had so lately kept up the struggle in that kingdom 
against the parliament, and only had at last, with the greatest 
difficulty, been induced to surrender Dublin, Ormond, upon 
his return to England, had been received by the general, the 
lieutenant-general, by almost all the leading personages of 
the army, with eager complaisance,"}" and had free access to 
the king, doubtless meditating with him another insurrection 
in Ireland. At the same time, the most active confidants of 
the king, Berkley, Ashburnham, Ford, and Apsley, were con- 
stantly going to and fro between the court and head-quarters ; 
the doors of Cromwell and Ireton were always open to them, 
while a number of the well-affected could gain no admittance 
there. Cromwell and Ireton themselves, either in person or 
by their messengers, maintained an assiduous intercourse 
with the king ; they had been seen walking alone with him in 
the park, were known to be often closeted with him. Even 
their wives, Mrs. Cromwell, Mrs. Ireton, Mrs. Whalley, had 
been presented at Hampton Court, and the king had received 
them with great honors.:}: So much familiarity was scandal- 
ous ; such repeated conference must needs mean treachery. 
Every day, among the republicans and enthusiasts, particu- 
larly in the meetings of the soldiers, this language was held. 
Even from the dungeon of the Tower, where the lords had 
imprisoned him, to repress if possible his harangues and pam- 
phlets, Lilburne addressed to Cromwell violent reproaches, 
and his letter finished with these words : "If you despise, as 
hitherto, my warnings, be sure I will use against you all the 
power and influence I have, and so as to produce in your for- 
tune changes that shall little please you."§ 

Cromwell had small respect for Lilburne's advice, and cared 
not for his threats, standing alone, but it was different when 
they were backed by the anger of so many of his heretofore 

* Herbert, 33 ; Hutchinson, 276. t Whitelocke, 267. 

t Clarendon, State Papers, ii., Appendix 11. 
§ This letter bears date 13th August, 1647. 



370 HISTORY OF THE 



devoted adherents. Ready to throw himself, when necessary, 
even with temerity, into the vortex of intrigue and daring 
hopes, he had still a keen sense of dangers and obstacles, and 
whatever his aim or passion, looked around him on eveiy 
side, found out all that was going on, and directed his course 
accordingly. He begged Berkley and Ashbumham not to 
visit him so often, and the king to permit him to observe more 
caution in their intercourse. " If I am an honest man," he 
said, " I have done enough to convince his majesty of the 
sincerity of my intentions; if not, nothing will suffice."* At 
the same time, he went to the Tower, paid Lilburne a long 
visit, held forth in earnest and pathetic language touching his 
zeal for their common cause, urged with vehemence the danger 
of the slightest disunion, asked him what he meant to do upon 
regaining his liberty, and promised, upon taking leave, to use 
every effort with the committee to whom the subject was re- 
ferred, to hasten his release. f 

Lilburne was not set at liberty ; the committee, of which 
Heniy Martin was chairman, even postponed their report jij: 
and the intercourse of Cromwell with the king, though less 
open, was not less active. A stranger to the blind presumption 
of his party, devoured by ambition and doubt, the most con- 
trary combinations and anticipations agitated his mind, and he 
was unwilling to break faith or to pledge himself to any of 
them irremediably. The success of the republicans seemed 
to him questionable, the desires of the enthusiasts chimerical ; 
the casuistical and passionate insubordination of the soldiers 
threatened his own power ; the quality of his mind rendered 
him intolerant of disorder, even while fomenting it ; the king's 
name was still a power, his alliance a means, his re-establish- 
ment a chance ; he kept it in reserve like many others, ready 
to abandon it for a better, pushing his own fortune by every 
path vvhich promised the greatest or readiest success. The 
king, on his side, well informed of the disposition of minds in 
parliament and the army, gave another turn to his negotia- 
tions ; they were now addressed less to the party than to its 
leaders, and indicated individual favor rather than public con- 
cessions. To Ireton was offered the government of Ireland ; 
to Cromwell the office of commander-in-chief, the colonelcy 

* Berkley, 42. 

t Biographia Britannica, Article Lilburne, v. 2950. % lb. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 371 

of the king's guards, the title of earl of Essex, and the garter ; 
similar advantages were mentioned with reference to their 
principal friends. Meantime, two royalists, judge Jenkins 
and a cavalier, sir Lewis Dewes, prisoners in the Tower with 
Lilburne, were continually talking with him of the treaty 
already concluded, they said, between the generals and the 
court, mentioned its conditions, stirred up his suspicions, and 
urged him to propagate them. Merely suspected, such a 
bargain threw the party into confusion ; accepted, it would 
assure the king the support of the leaders, or leave themselves 
without support.* 

The two generals could not be ignorant as to these 
manoeuvres ; they had surrounded the king with their spies ; 
colonel Whalley, whose regiment had charge of him, was the 
cousin and creature of Cromwell ; the least incident in the 
king's life, his walks, his conversations, the visits and the pro- 
ceedings of his councillors, the indiscretions of his servants, 
were minutely reported to them ;f and more than once they 
complained that reports from Hampton Court, spread abroad 
as if by design, by destroying their credit with the army, 
rendered them incapable of serving the king in that quarter. 
Ireton, in particular, of more unbending mind, and less tole- 
rant of deceit, was so much displeased, that he was on the 
point of breaking off the negotiations. They, however, con- 
tinued ; and soon even the public conduct of the generals 
seemed to confirm the suspicions of the soldiers. At the 
entreaties of the Scots, and to give some satisfaction to the 
friends of peace (Aug. 27),:}: parliament had decided that the 
proposals made at Newcastle should once more be presented 
to the king ; the earls of Lauderd-ale and Lanark, lately 
arrived at Hampton Court, once more conjured him to accept 
them and join the presbyterians, who alone were sincere in 
the wish to save him.§ Alarmed at this danger, Cromwell 
and Ireton redoubled their protestations and promises to the 
king, advised him to reject the proposals, to require that those 
of the army, far more moderate, should be made the basis of 
a new negotiation, and promised to support the demand with 

* Berkley, 40. 

t See, in Rushworth, ii., 4, 79.5, a letter, in which Whalley gives an 
account of the manner in which the king spends his time, and of every- 
thing which happens at Hampton Court. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 774. § Ludlow, 92. 



372 HISTORY OF THE 



their utmost influence. " We are determined," Ireton sent 
him word, " to purge the house, and purge it again, and 
purge it still, until it shall be disposed to arrange amicably 
your majesty's affairs ; for my part, rather than fail in what I 
have promised the king, I would ally myself with the French, 
the Spaniards, the cavaliers, with any who would assist me 
in accomplishing it."* Charles followed the advice of the 
generals, and on receiving his answer,"!" a violent debate arose 
in the commons ; the irritated presbyterians would not deviate 
from their proposals ; the fanatics demanded that none at all 
should be received or offered. As they had promised, Crom- 
well and Ireton urged the fulfilment of the king's desire, and 
that a treaty should be opened between him and the parlia- 
ment, on the conditions offered by the army ; a step, on their 
part the more marked from its being altogether without result, 
the presbyterians and the fanatics having united to defeat it 
(Sept. 22).t 

The distrust and anger of the soldiers assumed a menacing 
form J at every station societies were formed, some of them 
open and tumultuous, others secret ; everywhere the w^ords 
" ambition, treachery, deceit," were re-echoed, always in 
connexion with the name of Cromwell ; every expression 
which had escaped from him in the heat of discourse was 
brought to mind and angrily commented upon : he had, for 
instance, talked of the necessity of ceasing the persecution 
of the cavaliers ; he had said : " Now that I have the king in 
my hand, I have the parliament in my pocket : "§ at another 
time : " Since Holies and Stapleton have had so much author- 
ity, I do not see why I should not govern the kingdom as well 
as they. And again, it was he who in the committee charged 
with the affair of Lilburne, had brought forward a thousand 
little incidents, tending to have him still kept in prison. || Lil- 
burne formally denounced him to the agitators, enumerating 
all the offices held by him and his adherents. IT The agitators 
in their turn demanded of parliament the release of Lilburne,** 

* Huntingdon, 155. 

t The answer was dated September 9, 1647. — Pari. Hist, iii., 
777—779. 

i Berkley, 44 ; Ludlow, ut sup. ; Huntingdon, 321. 
§ Banks, A Critical Review, &c., 83. 
11 Biographia Britannica, art. ' Lilburne.' IT lb. 

** Rushworth, ii., 4, 790. 



ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. 373 



of Fairfax that of four soldiers, confined, as they said, merely 
for a few offensive and threatening words against the king.* 
It was even proposed among Lilburne, Wildman, and some 
others, to get rid of Cromwell by assassination.f No such at- 
tempt, however, was made ; but whether on this occasion, or 
from some other cause, even the council of agitators became 
suspected by the soldiers ; the lieutenant-general, they said, 
had spies among them who informed him of everything. To 
avoid this danger, several regiments appointed, under the name 
of new agents, purer agitators, charged to watch the traitors 
and serve the good cause in whatever place, at whatever price, 
A few superior officers, and some members of the commons, 
Rainsborough, Ewers, Harrison, Robert Lilburne,:}: and Scott, 
placed themselves at the head of this movement; and the 
most violent faction, thus separated from the general council 
of officers and parliament, began openly to proclaim its maxims 
and designs. § 

Cromwell grew uneasy : he saw the army disunited, the 
royalists and the presbyterians watching the moment to profit 
by its discords, himself attacked by men of inexorable will, 
hitherto his most faithful allies, his most useful instruments. 
From day to day the king's intentions became more and more 
suspected : " I shall play my game as well as I can," said 
Charles to Ireton, who pressed him to join them openly ;|| and 
lords Lauderdale and Lanark, still assiduous in their attend- 
ance, promised him the support of a Scottish army if he would 
accept of their alliance. Already, it was said, the prelimina- 
ries of a treaty were agreed upon ; it was even added that in 
Scotland, where Hamilton's credit prevailed over that of 
Argyle, troops were marching towards the borders. IT On their 
side, the English cavaliers, Capel, Langdale, and Musgrave, 
were secretly getting up an insurrection. " Be assured," the 
king had said to Capel, " the two nations will soon be at war ; 
the Scotch promise themselves the co-operation of all the pres- 
byterians in England ; let our friends, then, hold themselves 
ready and in arms ; for otherwise, whichever party is victori- 

* Rushworth, ii., 808. t Holies, 185. 

I The brother of John Lilburne, and colonel of a regiment of infantry. 
§ Beginning of October. — Ludlow, 91 ; Journals, Lords, Nov. 16, 

17, 1647. 

II Hutchinson, 277. - IT Rushworth, ii., 4, 786—810. 

32 



374 HISTORY OF THE 



ous, we shall get very little by it."* Meantime, the situation 
of the army quartered near London became critical ; the city 
paid no attention to the demands made for money to pay the 
men. and the officers knew not how to govern troops whom 
theyrfjould not pay.f In all directions the most daring pamph- 
lets were circulated ; some setting forth the designs of the 
soldiers against the king, others the king's negotiations with 
the generals. In vain had Fairfax demanded and obtained, 
readily enough so far, the establishment of a rigorous censor- 
ship ;:f in vain had Cromwell himself represented to the city 
the necessities of the army ; in vain had he displayed all the 
resources of reason and craft, to persuade the fanatics that 
they must restrain their fanaticism if they thought to be paid 
by the moderate, the moderate that, to keep the fanatics in 
check, they must pay them ;§ in vain had he succeeded in 
getjting some of his confidants elected among the new agents 
of the soldiers. His efforts were without result ; even his 
very prudence turned against him ; he had kept up a corres- 
pondence, had secured, as he imagined, means of action with 
all parties ; and now everywhere a wild, indomitable excite- 
ment threatened to countervail his schemes, to ruin his influ- 
ence. The end of so much ability, so much exertion, had 
only been to burden his situation with greater difficulty and 
danger. 

Amid this perplexity, one of the spies he had at Hampton 
Court, in the very chamber of the king, sent him word that 
on that day, a letter addressed to the queen would be de- 
spatched from the castle, containing Charles's real designs to- 
wards the army and its leaders. The letter, sewn up in a 
saddle, carried on his head by a man, not in the secret, would 
reach, about ten o'clock that night, the Blue Boar in Holborn ; 
a horse was ready waiting there to take the bearer to Dover, 
whence the packet would sail for France. Cromwell and 
Ireton at once formed their resolution. Disguised as private 
soldiers, and followed by a single trooper, they left Windsor 
to go to the appointed place. On their arrival, they placed 
their attendant on the watch at the door, and entering the 

* Clarendon, iii., 106. f Rushworth, ii., 4, 804, &c. 

t By an ordinance of September 30, 1647 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 779—781 ; 
Rushworth, ii., 4, 799. 

§ Rushworth, ii., 4, 883, 884. 



ENGLISH EEVOLITTION. 875 

tavern, sat down at a table and had some beer. Towards ten, 
the messenger appeared, the saddle on his head : receiving 
immediate notice of this, they went out, sword in hand, seized 
the saddle under the pretext that they had orders to search 
everything, carried it into the inn, ripped it open, found the 
letter, carefully closed up the saddle again, and then returned 
it to the terrified messenger, saying, with an air of good hu- 
mor, that he was an honest fellow, and might continue his 
journey. 

Their informant had not deceived them : Charles, indeed, 
wrote to the queen that he was courted alike by both factions, 
that he should join the one whose conditions should be most 
for his advantage, and that he thought he should rather treat 
with the Scottish presbyterians than with the army : " For the 
rest," he added, " I alone understand my position ; be quite 
easy as to the concessions which I may grant ; when the time 
comes, I shall very well know how to treat these rogues, and 
instead of a silken garter, I will fit them with a hempen 
halter." The two generals looked at each other, and all their 
suspicions thus confirmed, returned to Windsor, henceforward 
as free from uncertainty respecting their designs upon the 
king as respecting his towards them.* 

It was full time their conduct should cease to be wavering 
and undecided : the wrath of the fanatics broke forth, and 
threw the army into the greatest confusion. On the 9th of 
October, in the name of five regiments of horse, among which 
Cromwell's own regiment figured, the new agitators drew up, 
under the title of " The Case of the Army," a long decla- 
ration of their suspicions, their principles, and their wishes. 
On the 18th, they presented it officially to the general ; and 
on the 1st of November a second pamphlet, entitled, " An 
Agreement of a People for a firm and present Peace on the 
ground of common right," addressed to the whole nation in 
the name of sixteen regiments. In both, the soldiers accused 
the officers of treachery, the parliament of malversation, ex- 
horted their comrades to join them, and demanded that the 
present parliament should be speedily dissolved ; that for the 
future no person or body should share sovereign power with 
the house of commons ; that parliament should be triennial ; 

* This occurred in the course of October ; Clarendon, State Papers, 
ii.. Appendix, xxxviii. 



376 HISTOKY OF THE 



that the suffrage should be equally distributed over the 
country according to population and taxation ; that no member 
should be capable of being elected to two successive parlia- 
ments, no citizen imprisoned for debt, or compelled to serve 
in the army or navy, or excluded from any office merely on 
account of his religion ; that the provinces should appoint 
all their own magistrates ; that the civil law, equal for all, 
should be reformed and recast in a single code ; finally, that 
certain rights, above all, liberty of conscience, should be de- 
clared inviolable, and superior to all human power.* 

At this declaration of popular ideas and hopes, the uneasi- 
ness of the leaders was extreme ; many of them, and these 
the more intelligent, though enemies to the court and to the 
presbyterians, regarded royalty and the upper house as so 
potent, so deeply rooted in the traditions, laws, and manners 
of the people, that a republic, now at length seen near at 
hand, close impending, had the effect of a perilous chimera. 
Among the republicans themselves, the majority, though sin- 
cere and daring, were far from participating in all the views 
of the soldiers ; some, with influence in the elections for their 
town or county, feared that a new system would deprive them 
of their preponderance ; others, who had got possession of 
church property, heard with terror the people express their 
indignation that this property should have been sold at so low 
a price, and demand that all such sales should be annulled ; 
the lawyers were anxious to retain their influence and their 
profits ; all these classes and others vehemently opposed the 
idea of the house being dissolved, and their cause being left 
to the chances of a new election. Their common sense, 
moreover, revolted at the little social importance, the insane 
mysticism, the haughty insubordination of the reforming 
soldiers. How establish a government, in the face of the 
royalists and presbyterians, with an ungovernable faction, 
senseless enough to put in jeopardy, day after day, the union 
with the army, its only support ? How assail, for the sake 
of the reveries of obscure sectarians, all the traditions, all the 
ancient and respected rights of England ? Yet these same 
reveries were exciting in the minds of the lower classes, in 
almost every part of the kingdom, a fermentation, altogether 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 845, 859 ; Godwin, ii., 445. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 377 



unprecedented ; those vague, glowing notions of absolute 
justice, those impassioned desires for equal happiness, which, 
often suppressed, are never extinguished in the heart of man, 
burst forth in all directions, with a blind and furious confi- 
dence ; and the leaders themselves, who would not listen to, 
knew not how to answer them, for, at bottom, they shared the 
principles in whose name these wishes were proclaimed. 

Their first proceedings were consequently feeble and fluc- 
tuating. Parliament voted that the two pamphlets were a 
crime against the government of the kingdom, and that it 
would prosecute their authors ; but at the same time, to please 
the republicans, it declared that the king was bound to adopt 
whatever should be proposed to him by parliament (Nov. 6).* 
The general council of officers assembled at Putney (Oct. 
22),-j- invited the principal agitators to join them, and a com- 
mittee, in which several of them sat, received orders to draw 
up, without delay, a statement of their demands. In a short 
time, accordingly, the committee presented to parliament a 
report, embodying most of these demands ; but the name and 
essential prerogatives of the king were equally set forth in it 
(Nov. 2).:}: The agitators protested against this ; they were 
promised that in an early council, the question whether mon- 
archy was any longer to exist should be freely discussed. 
But when the day came, Ireton abruptly quitted the council, 
protesting that he would never re-enter it if such a question 
was even touched upon. The debate was adjourned till the 
following Monday, November 6th ; and whether once more to 
evade it, or whether more compliance was hoped for from the 
soldiers in a body, it was agreed that the army should be sum- 
moned to a general meeting, at which it might give expression 
to its common sentiments. § 

But Cromwell, who had proposed, easily discerned the dan- 
ger of this remedy. Each fresh debate excited fresh dis- 
union in the army ; the more they were consulted, the more 
they shook off the government of their leaders and fell into 
anarchy. Ij To save, to make it of use, it was essential with- 

* Journals, &c. November 5th and 6th ; Pari. Hist., iii., 785. 
t Rushworth, ii., 4, 849. J lb., 861, &c. 

§ Clarendon, State Papers, ii., App. xli. ; Letter of several agitators 
to their respective regiments; Godwin, ii., 451. 
II Clarendon, ut sup. 

32* 



378 HISTORY OF THE 



out delay to restore in it discipline, to regain over it command. 
Very determined steps were necessary to effect this. It was 
clear that the soldiers, at least the most active among them, 
the leaders and fanatics, were resolved to get rid of the king, 
that they would forsake, nay attack whomsoever should ap- 
pear favorable to him ; that he alone would command their 
obedience and their strength, who should in this adopt their 
common will, and execute it. Cromwell formed his resolution. 
When the day of the council came, all debate was forbidden ; 
the superior officers declared, that to re-establish harmony in 
the army it was necessary that all, officers and agitators, 
should return to their regiments ; that instead of a general 
meeting, there should be three special meetings in the quarters 
of the principal divisions ; and that, meanwhile, the council 
should suspend its sittings, and leave the general and the par- 
liament to act.* The king's situation at Hampton Court was 
suddenly changed : his councillors, Richmond, Southampton, 
and Ormond, received orders to depart ; his most trusty ser- 
vants, Berkley and Ashburnham among others, were with- 
drawn from him ; his guards were doubled ; he no longer en- 
joyed the same liberty in his walks. From all sides dark 
hints~ reached him ; it was said that the soldiers intended to 
seize his person and to take him from the officers as these had 
taken him from the parliament. Cromwell himself wrote on 
the subject, with uneasiness, to Colonel Whalley, whether he 
really feared some attempt of the kind, or that he merely 
wished to alarm the king, or rather that, careful as ever to be 
prepared against all chances, he wished still to deceive him 
respecting his intentions and retain the appearance of a desire 
to serve him.*]" 

These changes, these reports, so many new restrictions, a 
thousand rumors of treachery, of unprecedented designs, even 
of murder, threw the unhappy Charles into a state of anxiety 
each day more painful ; his imagination, susceptible and vivid, 
though grave, was disturbed ; a bad day's sport, a painful 
dream, the going out of his lamp in the night,:]: everything 
seemed to him an ominous presage ; everything seemed to him 
possible at the hands of such enemies, though his pride refused 
to believe they would dare proceed to extremities. Flight was 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 666. f lb., ii., 4, 842 ; Holies, 187. 

X Heibert, 88. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 379 

suggested to him ; he was tempted to adopt the suggestion ; 
but whither fly ? how ? with what aid ? The Scottish com- 
missioners offered to favor his escape. One day, while he 
was hunting, Lauderdale had it intimated to him that they were 
close by with fifty horse, and that if he would join them, 
they would depart at full speed for the north.* But sudden 
resolutions confused the king ; besides, what asylum was he 
to look for in Scotland, which had already given him up, 
where he had no longer any means whatever of resisting the 
presbyterian yoke and the covenant ? He refused. By 
another party he was advised to embark and retire to the isle 
of Jersey, where the facility of passing over to the continent 
would compel all parties to keep fair with him. But he still 
relied on the strength of their continued promises, on the good 
will of the officers ; he flattered himself their coldness was 
only forced and counterfeited, that at the next meeting of the 
army they would get the better of the agitators, re-establish 
discipline, and renew their negotiations with him. He did 
not wish to leave England before this last trial. f Yet the idea 
of flight became more and more familiar to him, more and 
more urgent ; he was told that a German prophet had pre- 
sented himself to the council of agitators, announcing that he 
was charged to reveal the will of heaven ; but at the bare 
mention of reconciliation with the king, they had refused to 
hear him. In every possible way, Cromwell had it insinuated 
to him that flight was necessary. Some one, it is not known 
who, spoke to the king of the Isle of Wight as a convenient 
and safe asylum ; it was near the mainland, its population 
was royalist ; only just before, colonel Hammond, nephew of 
one of the king's most faithful chaplains, had been appointed its 
governor. Charles listened with more attention to this sugges- 
tion than to any other, collected information, and even made 
some preparations.:}: Yet he still hesitated, and sought on all 

* Burnet, Memoirs of the Hamiltons, 324. 

t Berkley, 47, &c. ; Warwick, 307 ; Burnet, Memoirs of the Hamil- 
tons, 326 ; Ludlow, 92. 

t This is what evidently results from an account of the king's re- 
sidence in the Isle of Wight, addressed, after the Restoration, to 
Charles II., by sir John Bowring, a man otherwise obscure, but who 
was at that time employed in the secret mancEuvres of Charles I. I 
>vonder this little work, though disfigured by many errors, and evi- 
dently written by a man solely intent upon making the most of him- 



380 HISTORY OF THE 



sides something to decide him. An astrologer, William Lilly, 
was at this time in high repute in London ; inclined to the 
popular party, but refusing no one his predictions and advice. 
The king commissioned a woman, Mrs. Whore wood, to consult 
him in his name as to the place to which he had best retire ; 
and out of a thousand pounds which had just been sent him 
by alderman Adams, a devoted royalist, Mrs. Whorewood 
received five hundred for her mission. The stars having been 
solemnly interrogated, Lilly answered, that the king should 
retire to the east, into Essex, twenty miles from London, and 
Mrs, Whorewood hastened back with this answer to Hampton 
Court.* Charles, however, had not waited for it ; on the 9th 
of November, an anonymous letter, written as it would seem 
by a sincere friend, warned him that the danger was pressing ; 
that within a few hours past, the agitators had resolved, in a 
nocturnal meeting, to make away with him, and that every- 
thing was to be dreaded if he did not immediately place him- 
self out of their reach. ■]• Another letter warned him to beware 
of the guard which should be placed in charge of the castle:}: 
on the next day but two. Struck with dismay, Charles took 
his resolution ; on the 11th of November, at nine in the eve- 
ning, leaving several letters on the table, and followed by a 
single valet-de-chambre, William Legge, he proceeded by a 
back staircase to a door which opened into the park on the 
side of the forest, where Ashburnham and Berkley, informed 
of his design, were in attendance with horses. They directed 
their course to the south-west ; the night was dark and stormy ; 
the king, who alone was acquainted with the forest, served as 
a guide to his companions ; they lost their way, and did not 
reach till day-break the little town of Sutton, in Hampshire, 
where, by the care of Ashburnham, a relay of horses was pre- 
pared for them. At the very inn where he awaited them, a 
committee of parliamentarians was assembled, deliberating on 

self, but which yet contains characteristic and curious details, should 
have escaped the attention of the English historians ; Mr. Godwin is, 
as far as I know, the only writer who has mentioned it ; it was taken 
from lord Halifax's papers, and is to be found in a 12mo. volume, en- 
titled, Miscellanies, Historical and Philological (London, 1703). See 
also Rushworth, ii., 4, 951 ; Berkley, ut sup. 

* William Lilly, History of his Life and Times (1775), 60; Biogra- 
phia Britannica, article Lilly. 

t Clarendon, State Papers, ii.. Appendix, xli. % Berkley, 40. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 381 

the affairs of the county. The party set off again immediately, 
and proceeded towards Southampton, but without the king's 
having expressly declared to what place he would go. On 
the descent of an eminence near the town : " Let us alight," 
said Charles, " and consult on what is best to be done." 
First, it is said, they talked of a vessel which Ashburnham 
was to have secured, and of which they had no news ; then of 
turning into the western counties, where Berkley guaranteed 
the devoted support of many friends ; at last of the Isle of 
Wight, a more convenient resolution than any other which 
presented itself at the time, removing the immediate perplexi- 
ties of their situation, and evidently from the road they had 
taken, that which the king had proposed to himself when he 
came away. But the governor was not apprised : could he 
be trusted without security ? It was arranged that Ashburn- 
ham and Berkley should proceed to the island, and after sounding 
Hammond, acquaint him with the mark of confidence he was 
on the point of receiving, and that the king should await their 
return a few miles distant, at Tichfield, a mansion occupied 
by lord Southampton's mother. They separated, and next 
morning the two cavaliers, landing in the island, went direct 
to Carisbrook Castle, the residence of the governor. Ham- 
mond was not there, but at Newport, the chief town of the 
place, whence, however, he was expected to return that day. 
Ashburnham and Berkley took the road to the town, and meet- 
ing Hammond, informed him, without preamble, of the purport 
of their coming. Hammond turned pale, the reins fell from 
his hands, his whole body trembled : " Oh, gentlemen," said 
he, " you have undone me by bringing the king into this 
island ; if he is not yet landed, pray let him not come ; for 
what between my duty to his majesty and my gratitude for 
this fresh obligation of confidence, and my observing my trust 
to the army, I shall be confounded." They endeavored to 
calm him, enlarging upon the immense service he would 
render the king, and the engagements which the army itself 
had contracted with his majesty, but intimating that if he did 
not coincide with them, the king was very far from desiring to 
force himself upon him. Hammond continued his lamentations. 
But when the two cavaliers, in their turn, appeared distrustful 
and about to withdraw their proposal, he exhibited less indeci- 
sion, inquired where the king was, if he was not in dangei*, 



382 HISTORY OF THE 



and even expressed some regret that he had not at once 
entirely trusted himself to him. The conversation was carried 
on for a long time, on either side with anxious caution, both 
parties almost equally afraid to break it off or to commit 
themselves. At length Hammond seemed to yield : " The 
king," he said, " shall not have to complain of me ; it shall not 
be said I disappointed his expectations ; I will act as a man 
of honor ; let us go together, and tell him so." Berkley, still 
suspicious, would have evaded this proposal ; but Ashburnham 
accepted it, and they immediately set out together, Hammond 
being accompanied only by one of his officers, named Basket. 
A boat conveyed them in a few hours to Tichfield, and on their 
arrival Ashburnham alone went up to the king, leaving Berk- 
ley, Hammond, and Basket in the court-yard of the castle. 
On hearing his story : " Oh, John ! John !" exclaimed Charles, 
" thou hast undone me by bringing this governor here ; dost 
thou not perceive that I can now not stir a foot without him ?" 
In vain Ashburnham urged Hammond's promises, the good 
feeling he had displayed, his hesitation, a proof of his sincerity. 
The king, in despair, walked rapidly up and down the apart- 
ment, now with his arms folded, now raising hands and eyes to 
heaven with an expression of the deepest anguish ; at length, 
Ashburnham, moved in his turn, said : " Sire, colonel Ham- 
mond is here with only another man ; nothing is so easy as to 
make sui'e of him." " What," replied the king, " would you 
kill him ? Would you have it said that he hazarded his life 
for me, and that I unworthily deprived him of it ? No, no, it 
is too late to take any other course ; we must trust to God." 
Meantime, Hammond and Basket growing impatient, Berkley 
went to the king, and was directed to bring them up. Charles 
received them with an open and confiding air ; Hammond 
renewed his promises, more extended even, though still vague 
and embarrassed. The day was declining ; they embarked 
for the island. The report that the king was at hand had 
already spread there ; many of the inhabitants came to meet 
him ; as he passed through the streets of Newport, a young 
woman advanced towards him and presented him with a red 
rose in full blow, notwithstanding the severity of the season, 
praying aloud for his deliverance. He was assured that the 
whole population was devoted to him, that even at Carisbrook 
Castle the entire garrison consisted of twelve veterans, all well 



ENGLISH EEVOLTJTION. 383 

disposed to him, and that he might at any time he pleased 
easily escape. Charles's terrors were gradually appeased ; 
and next morning, when, on rising, he contemplated from the 
windows of the castle the charming view which the sea and 
land presented from that spot, when he had breathed the morn- 
ing air, when he saw in Hammond every demonstration of 
respect, when he received full permission to ride about the 
island at will, to retain his servants, to receive whom he 
pleased, his long troubled spirit once more felt a sense of 
security : " After all," he said to Ashburnham, " this governor 
is a gentleman ; I am here out of reach of the agitators ; I am 
in hopes I shall have to congratulate myself on the resolution I 
have adopted."* 

* Berkley, 57, &c. ; Herbert, 38 ; Ludlow, 94; Clarendon, iii., 118. 



384 HISTORY OF THE 



BOOK THE EIGHTH. 

1647—1649. 

The rendezvous at Ware — Cromwell suppresses the agitators, and af- 
terwards reconciles himself with them — The parliament sends to 
the king in four bills the preliminary conditions of peace — The 
king rejects them, and secretly treats with the Scots — The parlia- 
ment resolves that it will have no further communication with the 
king — General discontent and reaction in favor of the king — Embar- 
rassment of Cromwell and the independents — Breaking out of the 
second civil war — Fairfax's campaign in the east and round London, 
Cromwell's in the west, Lambert's in the north — Siege of Colches- 
tei- — The Scots enter England — Cromwell marches against them — 
Battles of Preston, Wigan, and Warrington — Cromwell in Scotland — 
The presbyterians regain the ascendency in London — The parliament 
again opens a treaty with the king — Negotiations at Newport — 
Changes in the situation of parties — The army carries off the king 
from the Isle of Wight — He is removed to Hurst castle — Then to 
Windsor — Last efforts of the presbyterians in his favor — Trial and 
death of the king — Monarchy abolished. 

The parliamentary commissioners and the officers of the gar- 
rison at Hampton Court waited for the king to appear at the 
supper table at the accustomed time ; astonished at not seeing 
him, they at length went to his room, and there found only 
three letters in his own handwriting, addressed, one to lord 
Montague, president of the committee, one to colonel Whalley, 
the third to the speaker of the house of lords. To the latter 
the king gave as the reason for his flight the plots of the agi- 
tators, and his right to live free and in safety like any other 
citizen. The two other letters were merely to express to 
Montague and Whalley his thanks for their attentions, and to 
direct them what to do with his horses, dogs, pictures, and the 
minor articles of furniture in his apartments. No indication 
was given as to the road he meant to take, nor the place of 
his retreat.* 

Great was the consternation in Westminster Hall, and all 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 786, &c. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 385 

the greater that, concurrently with the news from Hampton 
Court, came a letter from head-quarters at Windsor, written 
at midnight by Cromwell, who had hastened, he said, to com- 
municate the intelligence to parliament.* He, then, had been 
the first to know of it, before parliament, perhaps before the 
king's departure ; for a report became current that precisely 
on the 11th, the previously strict watch of the garrison at 
Hampton Court had been relaxed, that sentinels had even been 
withdrawn from the posts they usually guarded. f Letters 
soon came (Nov. 13) from Hammond, informing the house of 
the king's arrival,:]: protesting entire devotion to their service, 
and requesting their instructions. Yet men's fears were not 
dispelled ; Cromwell also had received letters from Hammond, 
as if all the servants of parliament thought themselves bound to 
give him information and consult him on every occasion ; and 
he reported the letters and their contents to the house with an 
exhilaration of manner which astonished the least suspicious,^ 
and appeared to them even, an alarming symptom of some 
success, of the fulfilment of some hope, the nature of which 
they in vain attempted to discover. 

Two days had scarcely elapsed before he inspired his ene- 
mies with other and still greater alarm. It was on Nov. 15th, 
that the first of the three appointed meetings of the army, 
which were to put an end to its dissensions, was to take place 
at Ware, in Hertfordshire. Cromwell proceeded thither with 
Fairfax, surrounded by the ofiicers of whom he was sure. 
Only seven regiments were summoned, those which had shown 
the least excitement, and with whom it seemed most easy to 
re-establish discipline. Cromwell relied upon their subjection 
to intimidate, or upon their example to calm the more furious. 
But when they arrived on the common at Ware, the generals 
found nine regiments instead of seven ; Harrison's regiment 
of cavalry, and Robert Lilburne's of infantry had come with- 
out orders, and in a state of the fiercest excitement. The 
latter had expelled all their ofiicers above the rank of lieute- 
nant, except captain Bray, who was now in command of 
them ; every soldier wore on his hat a copy of The Agree- 
ment of the People, with this inscription : " Liberty for Eng, 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 871. f Ludlow, 95. | Pari. Hist., iii., 789. 
§ Clarendon, iii., 130, 

.33 



386 HISTORY OF THE 



land, their rights for the soldiers." From time to time, as if 
seized with a common impulse, their shouts re-echoed over 
the plain : Rainsborough, Ewers, Scott, John Lilburne him- 
self, lately permitted by the commons to leave the Tower 
every morning for the benefit of his health, galloped over the 
common, riding from troop to troop, encouraging the more 
animated, calling the moderate cowards, repeating everywhere 
that since the sword was in their hands, they were in con- 
science bound to use it, to secure fully and for ever the liberty 
of their country. Amidst this tumult, Fairfax, Cromwell, and 
their staff, advanced towards the peaceable regiments, and 
read to them, in the name of the general council of officers, a 
calm and firm remonstrance, reproaching the new agitators 
with their seditious proceedings and the dangers they brought 
upon the army ; reminding them of the proofs of affection 
and fidelity their chiefs had given them, the triumphs they 
had obtained under their command, and promising to support 
the just demands of the soldiers in parliament, whether for 
themselves or their country, if, in their turn, they would sign 
an engagement to return under the laws of discipline, and 
henceforward respect the orders of their officers. Seven regi- 
ments received this address with joyful acclamations. Fair- 
fax advanced towards that of Harrison. The troopers no 
sooner heard him repeat their promises, than they tore the 
copy of the agreement from their hats, and exclaimed that 
they had been deceived, and would live and die with their 
general. Lilburne's regiment still remained rebellious and 
violently excited ; it even began to answer Fairfax by sedi- 
tious shouts ; Cromwell advanced : " Take that paper from 
your hats !" he cried to the soldiers ; they refused ; he sud- 
denly entered among their ranks, and pointed out and caused 
to be arrested fourteen of the most mutinous : a court-martial 
was assembled on the spot, and three soldiers condemned to 
death. " Let them draw lots," the council ordered, " and let 
him upon whom it falls be shot instantly." It fell upon Richard 
Arnell, a wild agitator ; the execution took place forthwith, in 
front of his regiment ; the other two condemned men, with 
their eleven companions, were marched away. Major Scott 
and captain Bray were put under arrest ; deep silence pre- 
vailed ; all the divisions returned to their quarters ; the two 
other meetings passed over without the slightest murmur, and 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 387 

the whole army seemed once more under the full command 
of its leaders.* 

Ci'omwell, however, did not deceive himself respecting the 
uncertainty, the danger even, of such a triumph : when he 
announced it to the commons (Nov. 19),'|' amidst the thanks 
voted him by the majority, delighted at the defeat of the 
agitators, the presbyterian leaders did not conceal their cold- 
ness, nor the republicans their anger : to the first, any success 
of Cromwell's was a matter of suspicion, whatever its apparent 
effect ; the latter regarded his conduct at the- meeting at Ware 
as another proof of treachery. Ludlow opposed the vote of 
thanks ;:): the preacher, Saltmarsh, came up from the country, 
as he said, by*an express command of God, to tell the generals 
that the Lord had forsaken them, since they had imprisoned 
his saints ;§ in short, after the first stupor was over, a crowd 
of subaltern and noncommissioned officers, soldiers, nearly all 
the revolutionary agents of the regiments, declared to Cromwell 
and Ireton, that no severity, no temporary check should turn 
them from their designs ; that they were resolved to get rid 
of the king, and establish a republic ; that at the risk of losing 
all, they would divide the army, take with them at least two- 
thirds of it, and prosecute the enterprise alone rather than be 
thus put down. Cromwell had no desire to reduce them to 
this extremity ; he had intended, by a signal example, to cut 
short the progress of anarchy in the army ; but he knew the 
power of the fanatics, and was quite disposed to a reconciliation 
with them. Without declaring for a republic, he spoke ill to 
them of the king, acknowledged they were in the right to hope 
nothing from him, owned that for himself the vanities of this 
world had dazzled him for a moment, that he had not been 
able to discern clearly the work of the Lord, nor trust wholly 
to his saints, humbled himself before them, and implored the 
aid of their prayers to obtain his pardon from Heaven. The 
*most popular preachers, among others Hugh Peters, an in- 
triguing and prating enthusiast, undertook to spread abroad his 
protestations and admissions. Cromwell even sent comforting 
promises to the soldiers in prison. All he insisted upon, and 
this he did in the firmest tone, was the necessity of maintain- 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 875 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 791 ; Clarendon, iii., 132 ; 
Mazeres, Select Tracts, part 1, preface 33 — 73 ; Godwin, ii., 462. 
t Whitelocke, 279. |: Ludlow, 96. § Whitelocke, 285. 



388 HISTORY OF THE 



ing union and discipline in the army, as the only means of 
success or even of safety.* Many believed his w^ords, ever 
impassioned and powerful ; others, not so blind, felt how much 
they needed his talents, and even while doubting his repent- 
ance, could not make up their minds to reject it. Most of 
them, besides, confessed that the agitators had been too hasty, had 
gone too far, and that the soldiers owed to their officers more sub- 
mission and respect. Rainsborough, Scott, and Ewers, admit- 
ted themselves in the wrong, and promised more prudence for 
the future. A great meeting took place at last at head-quarters 
(Dec. 22); officers, agitators, and preachers, passed ten hours 
together in conversation and prayer ; the common interest pre- 
vailed over, without altogether dissipating, their mutual rancor 
and distrust ; it was decided that the prisoners should be set 
at liberty, that captain Bray should return to his regiment, 
and that parliament should be requested to restore to Rains- 
borough the office of vice-admiral, which it had taken from 
him. I This reconciliation, of which the king's ruin was the 
condition, was celebrated by a solemn feast (Jan. 9, 1648).+ 

At this point of time, there arrived at head-quarters sir John 
Berkley, whom Charles, informed of the result of the meeting 
at Ware, had hastened to send to the generals, to congratulate 
them on their victory and to remind them of their promises (in 
the latter end of November). Though the bearer of letters 
not only from the king, but from Hammond to Fairfax, Ireton, 
and Cromwell, Berkley was not without uneasiness ; he had 
met, on his road, with cornet Joyce, who had expressed as- 
tonishment at his temerity, and told him that the agitators, so 
far from fearing anything, had drawn over the generals to 
their views, and were preparing to bring the king to trial. 
When he arrived at Windsor, the council of officers was as- 
sembled ; he presented himself, and handed his letters to the 
general. He was ordered to withdraw. Recalled in half an 
hour, Fairfax sternly addressed him : " We are the parlia- • 
ment's army ; we have no ans\\er to give to the proposals of 
his"" majesty ; our employers alone must judge of them." 
Berkley looked at Ireton, then at Cromwell j they scarcely 

* Berkley, 75. 

fRushworth, ii., 4, 943 ; Clarendon, State Papers, ii ; Appendix, 
Xliv. ; Whitelocke, 285. 
t Rushworth, ii., 4, 959. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 389 

bowed, and that with a smile of contempt. He withdrew quite 
astounded : the day passed without his being able to obtain an 
explanation or any intelligence ; at length, towards the evening, 
the commandant Watson, the officer with whom he had been 
most intimate, sent him word to be at midnight in a certain 
paddock behind the Garter Inn, where he would meet him. 
From him, Berkley learned what had taken place, and with 
what ardor the army was transported : "It is such," he said, 
" that I hazard my life in coming here ; for even this very 
afternoon, Ireton made two proposals ; one to send you prisoner 
to London, the other to forbid any' one to speak to you under 
pain of death. If the king can escape, let him do it, as 
he loves his life." " Do you advise me," said Berkley, " to 
send to Cromwell and Ireton the letters which the king has 
given me for them V " By all means; otherwise they would 
distrust I had revealed their designs to you."* 

As Watson had foreseen, Berkley from the two generals 
obtained neither interview nor answer. " I will do my best to 
serve the king," Cromwell alone sent word ; " but he must 
not expect I shall ruin myself for his sake." Sir John 
hastened to send this melancholy news to the king, conjuring 
him to get away without losing an instant. Charles, perhaps, 
might have done so ; for a vessel, sent by the queen, had, it 
is said, been cruising about the island for several days past.f 
But a fresh intrigue had reanimated the king's hopes. After 
a warm debate in the commons,:}: the house had just voted 
(Dec. 14) that four propositions should be presented to him in 
the form of bills ; and that if he accepted them, he should be 
allowed, as he had several times requested, to treat in person 
with the parliament. They were — first, that the command of 
the sea and land forces should appertain for twenty years to 
parliament, with power of continuation thereafter, if the safety 
of the kingdom should seem to require it ; 2, that the king 
should revoke all his declarations, proclamations, and other 
acts published against the house, imputing to it illegality and 
rebellion ; 3, that he should annul all the patents of peerage 
he had granted since he left London; 4, that parliament should 

* Berkeley, 73. flh.,'16. 

X The motion took place in the house of lords on the 26th of No- 
vember, and the commons adopted it on the 27th, by 115 to 106. — 
Pari. Hist, ill., 803. 

33* 



390 HISTORY OF THE 



be empowered to adjourn for whatever time, and to whatever 
place it should think proper. Charles, notwithstanding his 
distress, had no idea of sanctioning these bills, and thus ac- 
knowledging the legitimacy of the war which had brought 
him to this extremity ; but he knew that the Scottish com- 
missioners had strongly opposed them, that they had exhibited 
a bitter resentment of the contempt with which parliament 
had received their remonstrances :* he had received from 
them, concurrently with Berkley's letter, secret advice to 
reject propositions so offensive, and a promise that they would 
themselves come to the Isle of Wight and treat with him, in 
the name of Scotland, on far better conditions. " I must 
wait," he said to Berkley on his return ; " I will settle with 
the Scots before I leave the kingdom ; if they once saw me 
out of the hands of the army, they would double their de- 
mands. "f 

Lords Lauderdale, Lowden, and Lanark, accordingly, ar- 
rived at Carisbrook Castle, nearly at the same time (Dec. 23, 
1647) with lord Denbigh and his five colleagues,:}: the com- 
missioners from Westminster. The negotiations already 
opened at Hampton Court were now renewed between them 
and the king with great mystery • for, they said, they had 
only to protest to him personally against the proposals of par- 
liament. In two days the treaty was concluded, drawn up, 
signed (Dec. 26), and hidden in a garden in the island until 
it could be taken away in safety. It promised the king the 
intervention of a Scottish army to re-establish him in his just 
rights, on condition that he would confirm the presbyterian 
establishment for three years in England, himself and his 
friends not being required to conform to it ; and that, at the 
end of that term, the assembly of divines should be consulted, 
and he should definitively settle, in concert with parliament, 
the constitution of the church. Several stipulations to the 
advantage of Scotland, and which would have been highly 
offensive to the honor of England, accompanied this general 
concession. It was also agreed that to aid the Scottish army, 
the cavaliers all over the kingdom should take arms ; that 
Ormond should go and re-assume the command of the royalist 
party in Ireland, and that the king himself, as soon as he 

• Pari. Hist, iii., 825. t Berkley, 80. | Pari. Hist., iii., 824. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 89l 

should have rejected the four propositions, should escape from 
the island and proceed to the borders of Scotland, to Berwick, 
or some other place, and wait in liberty for the moment of 
action.* 

Everything thus settled, Charles sent word to the parlia- 
mentary commissioners that he was ready to give them his 
answer (Dec. 27). He had resolved, three years before, in 
the negotiations at Oxford, to deliver it to them in a sealed 
envelope, fearing that, once aware of his refusal, perhaps 
even of his projects, they might take measures that would 
undo the whole. But lord Denbigh obstinately refused to 
receive the king's message in this form. " Parliament," he 
said, " has charged us to bring back, not anything it may 
please your majesty to give us, but the adoption or rejection 
of the four bills." Charles was obliged to comply, and read 
the message aloud : it absolutely rejected the propositions, and 
requested to treat in person, without being pledged to accept 
anything beforehand. The commissioners withdrew, held a 
short conference with Hammond, and returned to Westmin- 
ster, and a few hours after their departure, while the king was 
discussing with Ashburnham and Berkley the means of es- 
cape prepared for the following night, the gates of the castle 
were closed, entrance forbidden to all strangers, the guards 
everywhere doubled, and almost all the king's servants, Ash- 
burnham and Berkley the first, received orders to quit the 
island forthwith. f 

Full of anger and painful uneasiness, Charles sent for 
Hammond : " Why," said he, " do you use me thus ? Where 
are your orders for it ? Was it the spirit that moved you to 
it ? " Hammond, who had no formal orders, was silent, and 
hesitated ; at last, he spoke of the answer his majesty had just 
made to the proposals of parliament. " Did you not engage 
your honor," said the king, " you would take no advantage 
against me in any case ? " Hammond : " I said nothing." 
The king: "You are an equivocating gentleman. Will you 
allow me any chaplain ? You pretend for liberty of con- 
science ; shall I have none ? " Hammond : " I cannot allow 

* Clarendon, iii., 151 ; Burnet, Memoirs of the Hamiltons, 325 — 
334. 

t Berkley, 92; Pari. Hist, iii., 828— S30 ; Bowring, 92—94; Cla- 
rendon, iii., 134. 



392 HISTORY OF THfi 



you any chaplain." The king: "You use me neither like 
a gentleman nor a Christian." Hammond: " I will speak with 
you when you are in a better temper." The king : " I have 
slept well to-night." Hammond : "I have used you very 
civilly." The king: "Why do you not so now then?" 
Hammond : " Sir, you are too high." The king : " My shoe- 
maker's fault, then ; and yet my shoes are of the same last." 
This he repeated several times as he walked the room, then 
turning towards Hammond, he said : " Shall I have liberty to 
go about to take the air ? " Hammond : " No, I cannot grant 
it." The king : " You cannot grant it ! Is this the faith you 
owe me ? Is this your allegiance ? Answer." Hammond 
hastily left the room, agitated and with tears in his eyes ; but 
he in no respect altered his late arrangements.* 

Meantime, the parliamentary commissioners arrived at West- 
minster : they had no sooner given an account of their journey 
and its results, than a member till then unnoticed in the house, 
sir Thomas Wroth, rose (Jan. 3, 1648) : " Mr. Speaker," said 
he, " Bedlam was appointed for madmen, and Tophet ■\ for 
kings ; but our kings of late have carried themselves as if 
they were fit for no place but Bedlam ; I propose we lay the 
king by, and settle the kingdom without him. I care not what 
form of government you set up, so it be not by kings or devils." 

* Clarendon, State Papers, ii., Appendix, 44; Rushworth, ii., 4, 959, 
960; Whitelocke, 286. 

t That is to say, " Hell." Topheth is a Hebrew word, which in its 
general acceptation, means an abominable thing, a thing worthy of ex- 
ecration (the radical word signifies " to split with disgust"), and as a 
proper name, it designates a place in the valley of Ben Hinnom, " the 
valley of the sons of lamentation, where sacrifices had long been offered 
to Moloch, and where the statues of the false gods were thrown when 
their altars were demolished on the heights of Jerusalem, and which 
afterwards became a sort of receptacle for all the filth and impurities of 
the town, and where the bodies of executed criminals were burnt. It 
is in this sense that the prophet Isaiah, menacing with utter ruin Senna- 
cherib and his army, says (chap, xxx., 33), " F'or Tophet is ordained 
of old ; yea, for the king it is prepared" 8fc. Yet some ancient 
divines, among others St. Jerome and the Chaldean paraphrast, simply 
understood by Tojo^e^/i, " Hell, " Gehenna;" and after them, Calvin and 
the theologians of the Reformation, have given no other acceptation to 
this word. It is in this sense that it is employed in the English version 
of the Bible, that it is used by Milton (Par. Lost, book i., lines 392, 
493-495) ; and the writers of his time ; and sir Thomas Wroth alluded 
to this passage in Isaiah, which was at that time, as well as all other 
Scripture texts, present to the memory of most of his auditors. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 393 

Ireton immediately supported the motion. " The king," he 
said, " has denied safety and protection to his people by deny- 
ing the four bills ; subjection to him is only in exchange of 
his protection to his people ; this being denied by him, we may 
as well deny any more subjection to him, and settle the king- 
dom without him." Astounded at so rough an attack, irritated 
themselves by the king's refusal, the presbyterians appeared 
for awhile perplexed and timid ; several members, however, 
spoke against the proposition : " To adopt it," said Maynard, 
" is, as far as in us lays, to dissolve the pai'liament ; when 
kings have refused to receive our petitions, or admit our ad- 
dresses, this has always been held the highest breach of our 
privileges, because it tended to our dissolution without dis- 
solving us ; and if we now, on our parts, determine we will 
receive no more messages from him, nor make any more ad- 
dresses to him, we declare we are no longer a parliament." 
The discussion was prolonged and grew warm ; the presby- 
terians regained confidence ; the house, at first indifferently 
disposed towards them, seemed wavering ; Cromwell rose : 
" Mr. Speaker," said he, " the king is a man of great sense, 
of gi'eat talents, but so full of dissimulation, so false, that there 
is no possibility of trusting him. While he is protesting his 
love for peace, he is treating underhand with the Scottish com- 
missioners, to plunge the nation into another war. It is now 
expected the parliament should govern and defend the kingdom 
by their own power and resolution, and not teach the people 
any longer to expect safety and government from an obstinate 
man, whose heart God hath hardened ; the men who, at the 
expense of their blood, defended you from so many perils, will 
again defend you, with the same courage and fidelity, against 
all opposition. Teach them not, by neglecting your own and 
the kingdom's safety, in which their own is involved, to think 
themselves betrayed, and left hereafter to the rage and malice 
of an irreconcilable enemy whom they have subdued for your 
sake, lest despair teach them to seek their safety by some other 
means than adhering to you, who will not stick to yourselves. 
And how destructive such a resolution in them will be to you 
all, I tremble to think, and leave you to judge ;" and he sat 
down with his hand on his sword hilt. No one spoke after 
him ; the motion, immediately adopted (by 141 to 92), was 
sent the next day to the upper house (Jan. 4). At first the 



394 HISTORY OF THE 



lords appeared to hesitate ; the debate was twice adjourned 
(from Jan. 4 to 8 ; then from 8 to 11) : two declarations came 
from the army ;* one addressed to the commons, full of con- 
gratulations, and threats against their enemies : the other to 
the lords, mild, conciliatory, contradicting the reports spread 
abroad as to danger threatening the peerage, and promising to 
support it in all its rights. The cowardly portion of the house 
could as they pleased appear alarmed or reassured ; the dis- 
cussion was brought to a close, and when the motion was put 
(Jan. ]5), lords Warwick and Manchester alone opposed it."j" 

On the other hand, energetic and formidable protests were 
sent forth from all parts of the kingdom. " Now at last," 
cried the cavaliers, " are fulfilled those accusations and pre- 
dictions so often treated as chimeras or calumnies;" and on 
all sides, crowds of voices hitherto wavering, joined them in 
denouncing this execrable treason. Before there was time for 
the king to answer the declarations of parliament, several 
answers appeared, emanating from the spontaneous zeal of pri- 
vate citizens.:]: Never had so many reports of royalist plots, 
never had so many and such violent pamphlets besieged West- 
minster. § In the Isle of Wight itself, captain Burley, a half- 
pay naval officer, had the drum beat through the streets of 
Newport, and, collecting a body of laborers, children, and 
women, put himself at their head to go and release the king 
from prison. The attempt was immediately frustrated, and 
Burley hanged as guilty of having made war against the king 
in his parliament. II Similar feelings and desires agitated those 
counties which, just before, had been opposed to the royal 
cause ; even at the very doors of parliament, some of Essex's 
disbanded soldiers tumultuously assembled, crying : " God 
save the king !" stopping the coaches and making those within 
join them in drinking his health. H The republicans were in- 
censed at finding themselves thus disturbed in their victory : 

* Januaryllth ; they are dated the 9th. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 830-837; Clement Walker, History of Indepen- 
dency (1648), 72; Clarendon, iii., 142. 

J Clarendon, iii., 144. 

§ Rushworth, 4, 929, 974, 1002 ; two pamphlets, more particularly, 
entitled " The Parliament's Ten Commandments," and *' The New 
Testament of our Lords and Saviors the House of Commons sitting at 
Westiiiinster," caused great excitement. 

II Clarendon, iii., 137. IT Pari. Hist., iii., 804. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 395 

in vain they obtained addresses of congratulation* from a few 
counties ; in vain the commons proclaimed their design of re- 
forming the law, and of rendering the attainment of justice 
less expensive ; in vain did they even suspend their own privi- 
leges in reference to prosecutions and debts (Jan. 4).f These 
important ameliorations were only desired and appreciated by 
the party itself or a few superior minds ; some of them shocked 
the prejudices of the people, others were not understood by 
their ignorance ; with all, the interested motive which seemed 
to dictate them destroyed their effect. This want of popularity 
must be made up for by tyranny. The proceedings already 
commenced against such members of parliament and city ma- 
gistrates as were considered authors or fomenters of presbyte- 
rian or royalist riots, were urged forward ;:j: whoever had 
borne arms against parliament received orders to leave Lon- 
don, and were forbidden to reside within twenty miles of its 
walls (Dec. 17, 1647) ;§ a general revision of the justices of 
the peace throughout the kingdom was directed, with the view 
of getting rid of all whose principles should be suspected ;|| it 
was enacted that no delinquent, no person who had taken any 
part or was accused of having taken a part in any plot against 
the parliament, might be elected a lord mayor, alderman, or 
member of the common council of the city, or even vote at the 
election of these magistrates (Dec. 17) ;1F the same disquali- 
fication was shortly after applied to the functions of jurymen 
and to the election of members of parliament.** The com- 
mittee appointed to suppress the licentiousness of the press 
received orders to sit every day, and a sum was put at their 
disposal (Jan. 6, 1648),'|"f to reward those who should discover 
and seize the presses of the malignants. Finally, the army 
once more marched through London with all the paraphernalia 
of war, and three thousand men were detached from it and 
quartered, half at Whitehall half at the Tower.:}::}: 

The fanatics, the men of stern, narrow mind, the populace 

* Rush worth, ii., 4, 973. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 830 ; Rushworth, ii., 4, 985. 
j Rushworth, ii., 4, 922 ; Pari. Hist., iii., 838—842. 
§ Rushworth, ii., 4, 933. || lb., 920. IT lb., 934. 

** lb., 1252. tt lb., 957. 

XX Journal's of the House of Commons, January 27, 1648 ; Walker, 
72, 79. 



396 HISTORY OF THE 



of the party, congratulated themselves on these measures as 
signal proofs of their strength, and redoubled their ardor. 
Cromwell alone, though co-operating in, felt uneasy about 
them, not from any scruple, nor that he hesitated at anything 
tending to success ; but, despite his resolutions against the 
king, the hopes and pretensions of the republicans and enthu- 
siasts appeared to him insane. Throughout the country he 
saw the principal freeholders, the rich citizens, almost every 
person of any note, retiring from public affairs, forsaking the 
committees of management and local magistracies, and power 
passing into the hands of people of an inferior condition, eager 
to seize it, capable of exercising it with vigor, but ill-fitted to 
retain it. He could not believe that England would long con- 
sent to be thus governed, or that anything at all permanent 
could be founded on the legal oppression of so many and such 
considerable citizens, nor that the discord and anarchy daily 
increasing in parliament and under its sway, could end other- 
wise than in the destruction of the conquerors. His indefati- 
gable imagination was set to work to find out some means of 
putting an end to this state of things, or at least to discover in 
this dark chaos his own quickest and safest road to greatness. 
He assembled, one day at dinner at his house, the principal 
independents and presbyterians, clerical and lay, and earnestly 
expatiated on the necessity of conciliation, or at least of sus- 
pending their quarrels, in order to face together the new dan- 
gers it was easy to see were impending. But the humor of 
the presbyterians was too unbending, and their theological pre- 
tensions too exclusive to admit of such combinations. The 
conference was without result. Cromwell got up another of 
some political leaders, most of them general officers like him- 
self, and the republicans. It was necessary, he said, that they 
should in concert investigate what government best suited 
England, as it was now their part to regulate it ; but, in reality, 
he aimed at discovering which among them was likely to hold 
out, and what he had to expect or fear from them. Ludlow, 
Vane, Hutchinson, Sidney, and Haslerig, loudly declared their 
feelings, rejecting all idea of a monarchy as condemned by 
the Bible, by reason, and by experience. The generals were 
more reserved ; according to them, a republic was desirable, 
but its success doubtful ; it was better to come to no sudden 
determination, but to watch the progress of things, the neces- 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 397 

sities of the times, and obey from day to day the directions of 
Providence. The republicans insisted upon an unequivocal 
declaration. The discussion grew warm; Ludlow, among 
others, pressed Cromwell hard to declare himself, for they 
were resolved, he said, to know who were their friends. 
Cromwell evaded the point for awhile, till, at last, urged more 
and more, he suddenly rose, and, with a forced jest, hastily 
quitted the room, flinging as he went out a cushion at Ludlow's 
head, who sent another after him, " which," says Ludlow, 
" made him hasten down stairs faster than he desired."* 

Meantime, the danger drew nigh ; the number and boldness 
of the malcontents increased every day : not only in the west 
and north, but around London, in Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, 
and Kent, at the table of some rich gentleman, at the assizes, 
at the markets, in every place where the cavaliers could con- 
cert or mix with the people, royalist petitions, plans, and 
insurrections, were got up and openly announced. At Can- 
terbury, on Christmas day, as the inayor was endeavoring to 
enforce the ordinance which suppressed that festival, a violent 
tumult arose, amid the cry : " God, king Charles, and the 
county of Kent !" The city arsenal was broken open, several 
houses of parliamentarians attacked, the municipal officers 
very roughly handled, and, but for the prompt arrival of some 
troops, the peasants of the neighborhood would have joined the 
movement and carried it out.f In London, one Sunday in 
church time, some apprentices were playing at bowls in Moor- 
fields (April 9, 1648) ; a guard of militia ordered them to dis- 
perse, they resisted, and beat off the militia ; routed in their 
turn by a detachment of cavalry, they spread all over the city, 
calling to their aid their companions and the Thames water- 
men; numerous bands assembled in every direction; they 
met in the night, took two of the gates of the city by surprise, 
stretched chains across the streets, and with drums beating 
and shouts of "God and king Charles," attacked the Mansion- 
house, got possession of a cannon, then of a magazine of arms, 
and at daybreak seemed masters of the city. A council of 
war had sat all night ; they hesitated to attack the rebels ; 
they questioned whether the two regiments quartered in Lon- 
don would be sufficient, whether it would not be best to await 

* Ludlow, 103. t Rushworth, ii., 4, 948. 

34 



398 HISTORY OF THE 



reinforcements. Fairfax and Cromwell decided for an imme- 
diate attack : it was as immediately successful ; in two hours 
nothing was to be heard in the streets but the regular step of 
the troops returning to their quarters.* But though they had 
fled, the people were not conquered ; every day some unex- 
pected event happened to augment their anger and raise their 
courage ; the presbyterian members and city aldermen, when 
brought by the commons before the upper house, obstinately 
refused to acknowledge its jurisdiction, to kneel at the bar, or 
even to take off their hats and listen to the reading of the 
charges ; and every time they appeared at Westminster, the 
multitude, as they came forth, hailed them with transport.^ 
Public meetings were forbidden ; the committee of manage- 
ment of each county was empowered to arrest and commit to 
prison all the disaffected — nay, all the suspected (April 18) ;:{: 
but public excitement made more rapid progress than tyranny : 
at Norwich, Bury St. Edmunds, Thetford, Stowmarket, and a 
multitude of other places, upon the slightest pretext, the drum 
beat, the inhabitants flew to arms, and the troops did not always 
find a mere menacing display answer the purpose of repres- 
sion. § They had soon, moreover, other things to dread than 
mere riots, mere citizen mobs. In Pembrokeshire, South 
Wales, captains Poyer and Powel and major-general Lang- 
horn, distinguished ofiicers, who had made their way in the 
parliamentary army, forsook it (towards the end of Feb.),|| 
raised the royal standard, and supported by the cavaliers of 
the district, saw the whole country in a few days in their 
power. At about the same time, the Scottish parliament met 
(March 2). Hamilton and the royalists, masked by an alliance 
of the moderate presbyterians, had prevailed in the elections ; 
in vain had Argyle and the more violent of the clergy endea- 
vored to thwart them ; as vainly had commissioners from 
London lavishly distributed money and threats in Edinburgh ; 
circumspect, even humble in its language to the fanatics, but 
in reality favorable to the king, the parliament immediately 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 1051 ; Whitelocke, 299; Pari. Hist, iii., 875. 
t Pari. Hist, iii., 844, 874, 877, 880, 881. 
t Rushworth, ii., 4, 1062. 

§ Rushworth, ii., 4, 1071, 1119 ; Journals, Lords, May 19th ; Journals, 
Commons, June 12th. 
II Rushworth, ii., 4, 1016. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 399 

voted (May 3) the formation of a committee of danger invested 
with the executive power, and the levy of an army of forty 
thousand men, charged to defend, against the republicans and 
sectaries, the covenant and royalty.* The cavaliers in the 
north of England only awaited the signal to break out. For 
more than a month past their principal leaders, Langdale, 
Glenham, and Musgrave, had been living in Edinburgh, some- 
times openly and sometimes in secret, concerting with Hamil- 
ton their plan of insurrection. In Ireland, lord Inchiquin, lord- 
lieutenant of the province of Munster, and hitherto the surest 
support of parliament against the insurgents, also went over to 
the king's standard. f Finally, when all this news came to 
London, the presbyterians, both in parliament and in the city, 
raised their heads : and to cover their hopes, made a loud out- 
cry about their fears. A man named John Everard, came and 
made oath to the common council (April 23) that, two nights 
before, being in bed at the Garter inn at Windsor, he had 
heard in the adjoining room, several officers, among others 
quarter-master-general Grosvenor and colonel Ewers, promise 
each other that the moment the Scots set foot in the kingdom 
the army should enter the city, disarm all the citizens, exact 
from them a million sterling under pain of pillage, and send, 
moreover, at the city expense, all the well-disposed they could 
collect, to the various regiments. According to Everard, Ire- 
ton was acquainted with this design. j: Hereupon a petition 
was forthwith drawn up and presented to the house (April 27) ; 
in it the common council required that the city should again 
be put in possession of its chains, which had been taken from 
it after the late riots, that the army should remove its head- 
quarters to a greater distance, and that all the forces in London 
and the suburbs should be placed under the command of 
Skippon. These demands were immediately granted ; and 
the next day, the 28th of April, after a debate of which no 
record exists, the commons voted : 1, that they would not 
change the fundamental government of the kingdom by king, 
lords, and commons ; 2, that the proposals made to the king 

* Baillie, Letters, ii., 281; Rushworth, ii., 4, 1040; Laing, iii., 
394—400. 

t Rushworth, ii., 4, 1060, 1063; Carte, Life of Ormond, ii., 23; 
Clarendon, iii., 150. 

X ParL Hist., iii., 881. 



400 HISTORY OF THE 



at Hampton Court should be made the basis of the measures 
it was essential to adopt to re-establish public peace ; 3, that, 
notwithstanding the vote of the preceding 3d of January, for- 
bidding any further address to the king, every member should 
be at liberty to propose what he should think requisite for the 
good of the country.* 

For three weeks Cromwell had foreseen and endeavored to 
prevent this reverse : in the name of the leaders of the army 
and of the party, he had caused an offer to be made to the 
common council (April 18), that the command of its militia 
and of the Tower should be restored to the city, and that the 
accused aldermen should be set at liberty, if it pledged itself 
to take no part in aid of the Scots in their approaching inva- 
sion ; but his offers had been rejected. f Compelled to resign 
all hopes of conciliation, when he saw the presbyterians re- 
gaining courage in the city and credit in the parliament, he 
was filled with a passionate desire to risk a decisive blow. 
He went to head-quarters, assembled the council of officers, 
and proposed that the army should march upon London, expel 
all their adversaries from parliament, and in a word, take full 
possession of power in the name of the well affected and of 
the public safety. In the first instance, the council was about 
to adopt the proposal, but so violent an attack on the rights 
of a parliament, long the idol and master of the country, still 
alarmed the boldest ; they hesitated. Fairfax, who began to 
be uneasy at what he was doing, took advantage of this, and 
resisted the entreaties of the lieutenant-general, who wished 
to give orders for the movement at once ; the project was 
abandoned.:]: Discomfited by this second failure, suspected by 
some for his endeavors at accommodation, by others for the 
violence of his designs, Cromwell, unable to endure such in- 
action, such embarrassment, resolved at once to leave London, 
to march and fight the insurgents in the west, and regain by 
war the ascendency he felt he was losing. He easily ob- 
tained this mission from the parliament. While the troops 
which were to accompany him were making their preparations 
for departure, he one day complained to Ludlow of his situa- 
tion, went over all he had done for the common cause, what 
perils, what enmity he had braved, and exclaimed against the 

* Pari. Hist.,iii., 882, 883. f Walker, 83. | Fairfax, 110. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 401 

ingratitude of his party. Ludlow listened to his complaints, 
and reminded him, in his turn, of the grounds he had given 
for distrust, pressed him to renounce intrigue and ambition, 
and upon this condition promised him the cordial support of 
the republicans, and was delighted with the docile attention 
his exhortations had obtained.* A few days after, at the head 
of five regiments, Cromwell took his departure for Wales, and 
almost at the gates of London, at a meeting previously ar- 
ranged, some presbyterian ministers had a conference with 
him, from which they retired equally satisfied. "j" 

He was no sooner gone, than the war he went to seek broke 
out on all sides round parliament : the cavaliers had, indeed, 
agreed among themselves to attempt nothing till the Scots had 
entered the country ; but every day, in one place or other, the 
popular impulse, a favorable opportunity, some unexpected 
and apparently imperative circumstance, precipitated the in- 
surrection. Some inhabitants of Essex had petitioned that 
negotiations should be re-opened with the king, and the army 
disbanded, after the payment of arrears (May 4).:j: Following 
their example, seven or eight hundred gentlemen, freeholders, 
and farmers of Surrey, repaired to London (May 13), bearing 
a similar petition ; but its tone was far more haughty ; it re- 
quired that the king, recalled to Whitehall, should be replaced 
on his throne with the splendor of his ancestors ; and when 
they arrived at Westminster, as they were passing through 
the ante-rooms, some of them, addressing the soldiei's, said : 
" Why stand you there to guard a company of rogues ?" 
The soldiers warmly resented this affront ; a quarrel rose, 
the soldiers were disarmed and one of them killed. A rein- 
forcement of troops arrived ; and the petitioners, charged in 
their turn, pursued from passage to passage, from hall to hall, 
from street to street, did not, however, fly till after a vigorous 
resistance, leaving five or six of their number dead at the 
doors of parliament. § On hearing this, the royalists of Kent, 
who were also preparing a petition, formed themselves into 
divisions of fbof^ and horse, chose officers, appointed places of 
rendezvous, made Goring, earl of Norwich, their general, 
took possession of Sandwich, Dover, and several forts, and 

* Ludlow, 105. t Hutchinson, 288. J Rushworth, ii., 4, 1101. 
§ Rushworth, ii., 4, 1116; Pari. Hist, iii., 886; Whitelocke, 306; 
Ludlow, 103. 

34* 



402 HISTORY OF THE 



assembled at Rochester (May 29), to the number of more 
than seven thousand, mutually engaged to march together and 
in arms to present their petition to parliament.* As soon as 
the banner of revolt was raised upon this pretext, others 
openly unfurled it, without taking the trouble of drawing up, 
in the form of petition or otherwise, their grievances and their 
wishes. Sir Charles Lucas in Essex, lord Capel in Hertford- 
shire, sir Gilbert Byron in the neighborhood of Nottingham, 
openly raised troops for the king's service. Parliament heard 
that, in the north, in order to open the way for the Scots into 
the kingdom, Langdale and Musgrave had surprised, and now 
occupied, the one Berwick, the other Carlisle. f Some symp- 
toms of excitement also appeared in the fleet stationed in the 
Downs ; Rainsborough, who was vice-admiral, set off imme- 
diately to repress it ; but the sailors refused to receive him 
(May 27), put all their officers in a boat, sent them on shore, 
declared for the king, and without any leader above the de- 
gree of boatswain, sailed for Holland, where the duke of 
York, who had lately succeeded in making his escape from 
St. James's, and soon after the prince of Wales himself, took 
the command of them.ij: Even in London, men were pri- 
vately enlisted, royalist oaths circulated, and armed bands 
passed through the city to join the insurgents ;§ the houses 
of the earl Holland and of the young duke of Buckingham 
were at all hours filled with malcontents, who came to inquire 
on what day, at what place, they were to assemble in arms.|| 
In every direction, in short, the insurrection, like an un- 
quenchable conflagration, raged and extended, still more and 
more closely pressing upon Westminster ; all the efforts of the 
committee of Derby House, where the independents prevailed, 
all the skill of Vane and St. John, in finding out informers 
and unravelling plotSjIT did not prevent the cry of " God and 
king Charles !" from sounding constantly in the ear of parlia- 
ment. 

The presbyterians themselves took alarm ; the Scots, their 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 1130. f Rushworth, ii., 4, 1099, 1105. 

J Clarendon, iii., 204; Pari. Hist, iii., 896, 899, 906; Godwin, Hist 
of the Commonwealth, ii., 531—533, 551—556. 

§ Rushworth, ii., 4, 1117, 1174 ; Pari. Hist, iii., 892—893, 
II Whitelocke, 317 ; Clarendon, iii., 264. 
IT Pari. Hist, iii., 887—892. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 403 

firmest support, did not arrive ; they found themselves on the 
point of falling into the hands of the cavaliers, the sole mas- 
ters of this new movement, and who having no better liking 
for presbyterian doctrines and intentions than for any others, 
indiscriminately denounced the whole parliament, demanded 
the laws and the king of old England, insultingly defied the 
austere rigors of the new form of worship, openly practised 
forbidden games, celebrated suppressed festivals, and raised 
once more the maypoles.* Hammond sent word that the king 
had been on the point of effecting his escape (May 31) ;-j- and 
the most moderate shuddered with fear at the thought of his 
appearing all at once at the gates of London at the head of 
these thousands of insurgents : party hatreds, the desire for 
peace, alarm for the future, all gave way before this great 
danger. To deprive the rebellion of its most specious pretexts, 
negotiations with the king were again voted (May 8 and 24) ;^ 
the aldermen of the city were fully acquitted (May 23) ;§ 
Skippon took the command of the militia, colonel West that 
of the Tower, from which he had been removed by Fairfax 
(May 18) ;1| and an ordinance against heresy and swearing, 
which authorized even the infliction of death in certain cases, 
attested the return of presbyterian ascendency jIT but, at the 
same time, all idea of concession or forbearance towards the 
cavaliers was sternly rejected ; a fresh order was issued, 
banishing from London, under still more severe penalties than 
before (May 23),** all papists and malignants ; the property 
of delinquents was appropriated to paying the debts due to the 
friends of the good cause (May ll);-j-f the sale of church 
lands was hastened j :}::}: reinforcements were sent to the garri- 

* Whitelocke, 305. 

t Pari. Hist, iii., 899—909, 921—928; Clarendon, iii., 353. 
i Pari. Hist, iii., 885—892. § lb., 891. 

II Rushworth, ii., 4, 1118. H Journals, Lords. 

** Rushworth, ii., 4, 1124. ft lb-, IHO. 

IJ Harris, Life of Cromwell, 306. — In the course of the years 1647, 
1648, 1649, 1650, and 1651, there was sold property belongiiig — 
To the see of York, to the amount of £65,786 7 If 

— the see of Durham . . . 68,121 15 9 

— the see of Carlisle . . . 6,449 11 2 

— the see of Chester . . . 1,129 18 4 



Total . , £141,487 12 4| 



404 HISTORY OF THB 



son of Carisbrook (towards the end of May) ;* the common 
council, after having received communications which were to 
it, it said, " as a beam of light piercing through dark clouds," 
solemnly protested that it was resolved to live and die with the 
parliament (May 20). f Finally, Fairfax received orders im- 
mediately to open a campaign against the bands who infested 
the neighborhood of London ; Lambert to march to the north, 
to repress, at all events, the insurrection that Langdale and 
Musgrave had raised while waiting for the arrival of the Scots ; 
and by a violence till then unheard of, doubtless to prove the 
sincerity of their rigorous proceedings, the commons voted 
that the king's presence no longer affording an excuse for the 
rebels, no quarter should be given them (May 11)4 

Three days after his departure from London (June 1), 
Fairfax had come up to and beaten, at Maidstone, the princi- 
pal body of the insurgents ; in vain had they sought to avoid 
so sudden an encounter ; in vain, when obliged to fight, had 
they maintained, in the streets of the town, a long and bloody§ 
conflict. Still animated by the most ardent fanaticism, inured 
to war, detesting the cavaliers, and despising their new re- 
cruits, Fairfax's soldiers passionately pressed forward a war 
the dangers of which seemed almost an insult. They tra- 
versed by forced marches the county of Kent, daily dispersing 
some gathering or retaking some place, rough in their demea- 
nor towards the country, but exact in their discipline, and 
allowing the royalists neither refuge nor repose. Goring, 
nevertheless, succeeded in again assembling three or four 
thousand men, and appeared at their head on Blackheath (June 
3), almost at the gates of London, incited by the hope that an 
insurrection would break out at his approach, or that at least 
he should receive some secret assistance. He even wrote to 
the common council, requesting leave to pass through the city 
in order to proceed quietly with his men into Essex. But the 
council, so far from sending him an answer, forwarded, with- 
out opening it, his letter to the commons, pi-epared, it sent 
word, to regulate its conduct in all things according to their 
wishes. II Upon hearing this the cavaliers grew dispirited, and 

*Rushworth, ii., 4,1130. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., S90. t Journals, Commons. 

§Rushworth, ii., 4, 1137; Pari. Hist., iii., 902; Ludlow, 107. 
II Rushworth, ii., 4, 1130 ; Whitelocke, 309 ; Ludlow, ut sup. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 405 

disorder spread among them ; they deserted in troops, and 
Goring had great difficulty in collecting a sufficient number 
of boats for them to cross the Thames at Greenwich with 
seven or eight hundred men, who followed him into Essex. 
There he found the insurrection, under the direction of sir 
Chai'les Lucas, still powerful and confident. Lord Capel 
joined them with a troop of cavaliers from Hertfordshire ; 
they marched together for Colchester (June 12), with some- 
what raised spirits, intending to rest there for a day or two 
and then overrun together Suffolk and Norfolk, raise the roy- 
alists as they went, and march upon London through Cam- 
bridge at the head of a numerous army. But they had 
scarcely entered the town, when Fairfax appeared under the 
walls and closely invested it (June 13). A fortnight's cam- 
paign had thus sufficed to enclose in one town, almost without 
means of defence, the wreck of the insurrection which had so 
lately surrounded London on all sides. The insurgents en- 
deavored to rally at several points, in the counties of Rutland, 
Northampton, Lincoln, and Sussex.* In the city itself, 
under the eyes of parliament, lords Holland, Peterborough, and 
Buckingham, took arms ; and, followed by about a thousand 
cavaliers, marched out of London (July 5), proclaiming that 
they had no design of sacrificing public liberty to the king, 
and only desired to restore to him his legal rights. But while 
they were still in the neighborhood of the metropolis, sir Mi- 
chael Livesey, who had been sent from head-quarters against 
them, suddenly attacked them (July 7), killed several of their 
officers, among others the young sir Francis Villiers, brother 
to the duke of Buckingham, and reinforced next day by colo- 
nel Scrope's regiment, pursued them without respite into 
Huntingdonshire, where, weary of this constant retreating, 
they dispersed in all directions, leaving lord Holland wounded 
in the hands of the enemy (July 10). f In the east and south, 
similar attempts had no better result. Letters were received 
from Cromwell (June 16), promising that in a fortnight Pem- 
broke Castle, the bulwark of the insurgents in the west, would 
be in his power. ^ In the North, Lambert, though with infe- 

*Rushworth, ii., 4, 1135, 1145, 1149, 1150, 1169; Ludlow, i., 
300. 

fRushworth, ii., 4, 1178, IISO, 11S2, 11S7; Pari. Hist, iii., 925— 
927 ; Ludlow, 110 ; Clarendon, iii., 266. 

X Rushworth, ii,, 4, 1159. 



406 HISTORY OF THE 



rior forces, valiantly maintained the honor and authority of 
parliament against Langdale's cavaliers.* Finally, Colches- 
ter, notwithstanding the indomitable resistance of the besieged, 
alike unmoved by offers and by attacks, was assailed by 
famine, and could not hold out long against Fairfax, who had 
nothing else to attend to.j" 

Freed from their first anxiety, sure of not falling a prey to 
the cavaliers, the presbyterians again began to feel uneasy 
about the independents and the army, and to meditate peace. 
The petitions in favor of it, still numerous, though less im- 
perious, were now better received.:]: The proscription of the 
eleven members was revoked, and they were invited to re- 
sume their seats (June 8).§ New proposals to the king, less 
rigorous than the former, were talked of; a disposition was 
shown to resume negotiations with him, if he would consent — 
1, to repeal all his proclamations against the parliament ; 2, 
to give up to it for ten years the disposal of the sea and land 
forces ; 3, to establish throughout the kingdom the presbyte- 
rian church for three years (June 6).|| A special committee 
(June 26)11 was appointed to consider the best mode of attain- 
ing the desired object, and at what time, in what place, and 
in what form it would be proper to treat. One member even 
inquired whether it would not be desirable for the king imme- 
diately to return to Windsor ; ** and upon a petition to that 
effect from the city (June 27), the lords voted that the con- 
ferences should be held at London. ff Finally, on the 30th of 
June, the vote forbidding any further address to the king was 
rescinded ;:j::j: and three days after, a motion was made in the 
house of commons that another treaty should be offered to the 
king without delay. 

But the independents had also regained confidence ; proud 
of the success of their soldiers, they violently opposed this 
motion : " No time," said Thomas Scott, " can be seasonable 
for such a treaty, or for a peace with so perfidious and im- 
placable a prince ; it will always be too soon or too late. He 
that draws his sword upon the king must throw his scabbard 

* Rushworth, 1159 ; Clarendon, iii., 228. 

t Rushworth, ii., 4, 1204; Whitelocke, passim. 

t Pari. Hist , iii., 921. § lb., 907. || lb., 904. 

IT Rushworth, ii. 4, 1164. ** lb., 1162. ft Journals, Lords. 

U Pari Hist., iii., 921. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 407 

into the fire ; all peace with him would prove the spoil of the 
godly." The presbyterians did not undertake to defend the 
king, but they declaimed against the pseudo-godly, who advo- 
cated war because war was conducive to their private for- 
tunes. " The people," they said, " have been despoiled by 
war, and will no longer be made fuel to that fire wherein 
these salamanders live, nor any longer feed those horse-leech- 
es, the army, their engaged party and servants, with their own 
blood and marrow." It was then asked where the negotia- 
tions were to be opened: the presbyterians contended for 
London, o«r some place in the neighborhood, the independents 
for the Isle of Wight, where Charles was in their power. 
" If you treat with this enraged king in London," said Scott, 
" who can secure the parliament that the city will not make 
their peace with him by delivering up your heads to him for a 
sacrifice, as the men of Samaria did the heads of the seventy 
sons of Ahab ? " It was further said by colonel Harvey, 
" if the king promised to reside in one of his houses not nearer 
London than ten miles, what security would his word be that 
he would reiTiain there till the treaty was concluded ? The 
king's promise hath been broken over and over again : put 
no trust in princes." Several members spoke in support of 
this view, and among others Vane. Sir Symonds d'Ewes 
said : " I am quite of a contrary opinion ; the house not only 
ought, but must trust the king ; Mr. Speaker, if you know 
not in what condition you are, give me leave, in a word, to 
tell you it : your silver is clipped, your gold shipped, your 
ships are revolted, yourselves contemned ; your Scots friends 
enraged against you, and the affection of the city and king- 
dom quite alienated from you. Judge, then, whether you are 
not in a low condition, and also if it be not high time to en- 
deavor a speedy settlement and reconcilement with his ma- 
jesty ? "* The independents vehemently protested against this 
address ; but many members, strangers to faction, and in the 
habit of suppoi'ting either party, according to circumstances, 
silently approved of what sir Symonds had said ; parliament 
resolved that it was necessary to treat ; but the house, contra- 
ry to the wish of the lords, persistedf (by eighty to seventy- 
two) in requiring from the king the adoption, in the first in- 

* Walker, 108—110; Pari. Hist., iii., 922—924. 
t Pari. Hist., iii., 924. 



403 HISTORY OF THE 



stance, of the three bills, and nothing was decided as to the 
place where negotiations should be opened. 

Parliament and the common council were discussing the 
feasibility of their taking place in London, without danger to 
the king or parliament,* when news arrived that the Scots 
had entered the kingdom (July 8),f and that Lambert was 
retreating before them. Notwithstanding the intrigues of 
Argyle and the furious preaching of a part of the clergy, 
Hamilton had at last succeeded in raising and putting in 
motion an army. It did not correspond, it is true, to the first 
resolution of parliament ; instead of forty thousand, it scarcely 
reckoned fourteen thousand men ; the court of France had 
promised arms and ammunition : none had been received ; 
the prince of Wales was to have crossed over to Scotland and 
taken the command : he still remained in Holland ; even Lang- 
dale and Musgrave's cavaliers had not joined them, for they 
refused to take the covenant, and Hamilton could not place 
such misbelievers by the side of his soldiers, without ruining 
himself with his own party ; they accordingly formed a sepa- 
rate body, which seemed to act only on its own account, and 
always at a distance from the Scots. In short, Hamilton's pre- 
parations, thwarted by so many obstacles, were not completed, 
nor his regiments full, nor his artillery in order, when the 
premature breaking out of the royalist insurrections in Eng- 
land obliged him to hasten his departure ; and he left Scotland 
ill-provided, and pursued by the invectives of a multitude of 
fanatics, who prophesied the ruin of an army employed, they 
said, to restore the king to his rights before Christ was put in 
possession of his.lj: 

The news of the invasion none the less agitated all England ; 
there seemed no means of resisting it ; Fairfax was still kept 
before Colchester, Cromwell before Pembroke : insurrection, 
scarcely repressed, might any hour break out again in all 
directions. The embarrassment of the presbyterians was ex- 
treme ; the people, even those well disposed towards them, 
were as inveterate as ever against the Scots, only spoke of 
them with insult, ]?ecalled to one another how they had lately 

* Rushvvorth, ii., 4, 11S5. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 931 ; Rushworth, ii., 4, 1188. 
I Rushworth, ii., 4, 1196—1198 ; Clarendon, iii., 222; Ludlow, 108; 
Laing, Hist, of Scotland, iii., 394, 



ENGLISH REVOLXJTION. 409 

sold the king they now pretended to deliver, and demanded 
that, before anything else was done, these rapacious and lying 
foreigners should be driven from the kingdom. A motion was 
made in the house of commons (July 14) * declaring them 
public enemies, and all who had taken part in inviting them 
traitors ; ninety members voted against the motion, but hesi- 
tatingly and without success ; it was rejected, however, in the 
upper house (July 18).")" The lords resolved that the negotia- 
tions with the king should be hastened,:]: and in the lower house 
the presbyterians (July 28, by 71 to 64), § carried a motion no 
longer to insist upon the three bills previously made the pre- 
liminary condition of any treaty. But without troubling itself 
about these vicissitudes in the daily position of parties, the. 
Derby-house committee, still under the influence of the inde- 
pendents, sent money and reinforcements to Lambert, ordered 
Cromwell to forward what troops he could spare to the north, 
and to march thither himself as soon as he should be at liberty ; 
and the republican leaders themselves, humbling their distrust 
before his genius, wrote to him privately to fear nothing, but to 
act with vigor, and i-ely upon them, regardless of any opposi- 
tion he might heretofore have met with at their hands. |j 

Cromwell had waited for neither orders nor promises ; 
already a month since, well informed, perhaps by Argyle him- 
self, of the condition and movements of the Scottish army, he 
had sent word to Lambert to fall back as soon as it appeared, 
to avoid an engagement, and that he would soon be ready to 
support him. And so it happened ; Pembroke castle capitu- 
lated three days after the invasion (July 11) ; and two days 
after, Cromwell set out, at the head of five or six thousand men, 
ill shod, ill clad, but proud of their glory, irritated by their 
perils, full of confidence in their leader, of contempt for their 
enemies, eager to fight and certain of victory : " Send me some 
shoes for my poor tired soldiers," Cromwell wrote to Derby^ 
house ; " they have a long march to take. "IT And he traversed 
nearly all England, first from west to east, then from south to 
north, with a rapidity till then without example,** lavish, on his 

* Pari. Hist.; iii., 934. f lb., 936. 

t Rushworth, ii., 4, 1183. § Pari. Hist, iii., 956. 

II Ludlow, iii. ; Godwin, Hist, of the Commonwealth, ii., 591. 
IT Rushworth, ii., 4, 1206. 

** He took his road from Pembroke to Yorkshire, through Gloucester, 
Warwick, Nottingham, and Doncaster. 
35 



410 * , HISTORY OF THE 



way, of protestations, of pious ebullitions, intent on dispelling 
suspicions, on gaining the hearts of the blindest fanatics, on 
enlisting the sympathies of his soldiers.* Thirteen days after 
his departure, his cavalry which had been sent in advance, had 
united with that of Lambert (July 27), and he rejoined it him- 
self the 7th of August, at Knaresborough in Yorkshire, the two 
corps forming together nine or ten thousand men. Meantime, 
the Scots had advanced by the western road through Cumber, 
land, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, but they were full of 
indecision, made long halts, were scattered over a line of fifteen 
or twenty miles, were internally agitated by religious, political, 
and military dissensions, and in complete ignorance of the 
enemy's movements. Suddenly, Langdale, who with the 
English insurgents was some way in advance of the main 
body, to the left, sent word to Hamilton that Cromwell was 
approaching, that he had certain information of it, and that 
everything announced on his part an intention of giving battle. 
" Impossible," replied the duke, " they have not time to come ; 
if Cromwell is so near, it is assuredly only with a very few 
men, and he will take good care not to attack us ;" and he i*e- 
moved his head-quarters to Preston. Another message (Aug. 
17) soon reached him ; Langdale's cavalry was already 
engaged with Cromwell's ; Langdale promised to hold out ; his 
position was good, his men in spirits ; he only wanted some 
reinforcements, a thousand men at least, and he would give the 
whole army time to rally and crush the enemy. Hamilton 
promised reinforcements ; Langdale fought for four hours ; 
by his own admission, Cromwell had never met with so 
desperate a resistance. But no assistance came, and the 
gallant cavalier was obliged to yield. Leaving the defeated 
English to an undisturbed retreat, Cromwell marched straight 
upon the Scots, who were hurrying across the Ribble to 
place this obstacle between him and them ; most of the regi- 
ments were already on the other side ; only two brigades of 
infantry, and Hamilton himself with a few squadrons, re- 
mained on the right bank to cover their retreat ; Cromwell at 
once dispersed them, and passing the I'iver with them, and 
giving his troops but a short repose, continued next morning 
(Aug. 18) at daybreak his pursuit of them, still marching to- 
wards the south, and continuing, even in flight, their invading 

* Hutchinson, 2S8. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 411 

movement. He overtook them the same day at Wigan, fifteen 
miles from Preston, and cut their rearguard to pieces. The 
pride of two victories, the hope of a decisive triumph, the very 
impatience of fatigue, hourly augmented the courage of his 
soldiers ; the pursuit was recommenced the next day (Aug. 
19), and with even greater rapidity and determination. Irri- 
tated in their turn at being thus pressed upon by an inferior 
number, and meeting with an advantageous defile near War- 
rington, the Soots suddenly turned and faced them, and a third 
battle took place, longer and more bloody than the previous 
two, but with the same result. The English carried the defile, 
and afterwards, also at Warrington, a bridge over the Mersey, 
which the Scots were about to break down, in order to give 
themselves breathing time. Vociferous dismay now manifested 
itself in the Scottish army ; a council of war declared that the 
infantry, being without ammunition, could no longer resist ; 
it surrendered in a body. Hamilton, at the head of the cavalry, 
went off towards Wales, to revive the royalist insurrection 
there ; but, suddenly changing his mind, he proceeded to the 
north-east, in the hope of being able to reach Scotland ; but 
everywhere, as he passed, the peasantry rose in arms, and the 
magistrates summoned him to surrender ; at Uttoxeter, in 
Staffordshire, on hearing a rumor that he purposed to escape 
with a few officers, his own cavalry mutinied ; at this moment, 
Lambert and lord Grey of Groby, who had been sent in pur- 
suit of him, were close at hand ; too faint-hearted to struggle 
against so adverse a fate, he (Aug. 25) left his men to surren- 
der or disband at their pleasure, accepted himself the condi- 
tions proposed by Lambert, was sent prisoner to Nottingham, 
and after a fortnight's campaign, Cromwell, finding no trace of 
the Scottish army on English ground, marched towards Scot- 
land to invade it in his turn, and thus wrest from the royalist 
presbyterians all means of action and of safety.* 

But in extreme peril, parties, so far from giving way, often 
become invigorated, and deal out their hardest blows. Even 
before this important intelligence reached Westminster, as 
soon as they saw Cromwell in movement against the Scots, 
the presbyterians clearly comprehended that his triumph 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 1237; Pari. Hist., iii., 997-1000; Laing, iii., 
400-403; Godwin, ii., 563-572; Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of 
England, &c. (1665), 606. 



412 HISTORY OF THE 



would be their ruin, and that his downfall, or an immediate 
peace, could alone save them. They at once directed their 
most energetic efforts to secure both the one and the other of 
these objects. Holies, who, notwithstanding the recall of the 
eleven members, had hitherto continued to reside in France, 
on the coast of Normandy, came and resumed his seat in the 
house of commons (Aug. 14).* Huntington, lately a major 
in Cromwell's own regiment, publicly denounced, in a memo- 
rial addressed to the upper house, the intrigues of the lieute- 
nant-general, his promises first, and then his perfidy to the 
king, the audacit)^ of his ambition, his contempt of parliament, 
of the laws, of the common duties and rights of men, the per- 
nicious principles, the threatening designs which sometimes 
pierced through his hypocrisy, and broke out in his familiar 
conversations. The lords ordered the memorial to be read, 
and Huntingdon made oath of its truth (Aug. 8). He pur- 
posed likewise to present it to the commons, but so great was 
the terror already inspired by the name of Cromwell, that no 
member would take charge of it. He sent it in an envelope 
to the speaker ; Lenthall did not mention it to the house ; he 
attempted to give it to the serjeant-at-arms, but he refused to 
take it ; the lords transmitted it officially to the commons ; 
lord Wharton, one of Cromwell's most intimate confidants, fol- 
lowed the messengers out, sent word to the speaker what they 
were coming with, and they were not admitted. f The inde- 
pendents vehemently denounced all these attempts against their 
general ; they denounced it as base cowardice thus to attack 
an absent man, who was, perhaps at that very hour, delivering 
his country from foreign invasion, and many of the presbyte- 
rians themselves were intimidated by this argument. The 
idea of destroying the lieutenant-general in this direct man- 
ner was given up, and Huntingdon contented himself with 
having his memorial printed. The steps taken for the esta- 
blishment of peace had more success : in vain did the inde- 
pendent leaders, particularly Vane and St. John, exhaust 
every stratagem to prolong the debates ; in vain did their less 
refined colleagues, Scott, Venn, Harvey, and Weaver, give 
way to the fiercest language against their adversaries ; this 
very violence, the daily increasing anarchy, the arrogance of 



* Rushworth, ii., 4, 1226. 

t Pari. Hist , iii., 965 ; Whitelocke, 327. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 413 

the soldiers, the impei'ious tone of even the most pacific pam- 
phlets and petitions, everything manifested to the house its 
own decline, everything led those who were not too deeply 
engaged in faction to desire peace. " Mr. Speaker," said 
Rudyard, one day, " we have sat thus long, and have come 
to a fine pass, for the whole kingdom is now become parlia- 
ment all over ; the army hath taught us a good while what to 
do, and would still teach us what we shall do ; the city, the 
country, and reformadoes, teach us what we should do : and 
all because we ourselves know not what to do ;"* and the 
majority thinking with him that peace alone could relieve 
them from its discreditable embarrassments, at last took their 
resolution, voted that fresh negotiations should be immediately 
opened with the king, agreed (July 29)f , to silence the inde- 
pendents, that they should take place in the Isle of Wight, 
and (August 2)j^ charged three commissioners to proceed 
thither with a formal proposal to the king, requesting to know 
in what part of the island he would like to reside during the 
treaty, and which of his councillors he wished to have with 
him. 

The independent leaders did not deceive themselves ; this 
was a clear defeat. Finding the crisis approach, and more 
fearful of their triumph than of their threats, the majority 
had manifestly passed over to their opponents. Ludlow di- 
rectly proceeded to head-quarters, still before Colchester : 
" They are plotting," he said to Fairfax, " to betray the cause 
for which so much blood has been shed ; they will have peace 
at any price ; the king, being a prisoner, will not think him- 
self bound by his promises ; even those who most urge nego- 
tiations care little about making him fulfil them ; to employ 
his name and authority to destroy the army is their only aim ; 
the army has achieved power ; it must make use of it to pre- 
vent its own ruin' and that of the nation." Fairfax admitted 
this, protested that, in case of need, he would be ready to em- 
ploy the force he had at his disposal for the safety of the pub- 
lic cause : " But," said he, " I must be clearly and positively 
called upon to do so ; and for the present, I must prosecute 
this wearisome siege, which has already lasted so long, de- 
spite all our efforts." Ludlow went to Ireton, whom Crom- 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 957. 

t Pari. Hist, iii., 986. { Pari. Hist., iii., 964, 965. 

35* 



414 HISTORY OF THE 



well had taken care to leave with the general, and from whom 
he expected more zeal. " The moment is not yet come," 
said Ireton ; " we must let the negotiations go on, and the 
peril become evident."* The republicans, in default of the 
army, got up threatening petitions to parliament, one, among 
the rest, drawn up by Henry Martyn (Sept. ll),t which, set- 
ting forth all the principles of the party, summoned the com- 
mons to declare themselves the sovereign power, and at length 
to answer the expectations of the people by giving them the 
reforms they had anticipated when they took up arms for the 
parliament. The commons made no reply ; two days after, 
a second petition came, complaining bitterly of such contempt ; 
and this time the petitioners waited in a body at the door, an- 
grily crying : " We know no use of a king or lords any 
longer ! these distinctions were the devices of men ; God 
made us all equal ; there are many thousands will spend their 
blood in maintenance of these principles ; forty thousand of 
us have signed this petition, but we hold five thousand horse 
would do more good in it." Even some of the members, 
Scott, Blackiston, and Weaver, went out, mingled familiarly 
with the crowd, and encouraged them. The house persisted 
in its silence ; but the firmer it showed itself, the more vio- 
lently did the party hurry on towards its most extreme de- 
signs, and five days after this scene (Sept. 18),^ Henry Mar- 
tyn suddenly departed for Scotland, which Cromwell had just 
entered. 

At the same time (Sept. 13), fifteen commissioners pro- 
ceeded to the Isle of Wight, five lords and ten members of 
the commons,^ all, excepting Vane, and perhaps lord Say, 
favorable to peace. Never had negotiation excited such 
anxious expectation ; it was to last forty days ; the king had 
eagerly accepted it, giving his word that during that period 
and for twenty days after, he would make no attempt to 
escape. Twenty of his oldest servants, lords, divines, lawyers, 
had been permitted to advise with him ; he had even requested 

* Ludlow, 113. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 1005—1012 ; Rushworth, ii.,4, 1257. 

t Whitelocke, 337. 

§ The lords Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury, Middlesex and 
Say, Wenman ; Messieurs Holies, Pierpoint, Vane, Grimstone, sir John 
Potts, John Carew, Samuel Brown, John Glynn, and John Bulkley. 



ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. 415 

and obtained that part of his household, domestics, pages, 
secretaries, chamberlains, grooms of the chamber and so on, 
should be restored to him on this occasion.* Accordingly 
when the commissioners arrived in the little town of Newport 
(Sept. 15), the throng was so great that thi'ee days passed be- 
fore all the new-comers could procure lodgings. Meantime, 
the commissioners waited upon the king every morning, pro- 
foundly respectful but very reserved, and no one of them ven- 
turing to converse with him in private. But on the other 
hand, most of them held familiar communication with his 
councillors, and through them conveyed to him their advice, 
exhorting him above all things to accept at once and without 
discussion the proposals of parliament ; for, said they, all 
would be lost if the negotiation was not concluded and the 
king returned to London before the army and Cromwell 
should arrive there.f Charles seemed to believe in the sin- 
cerity of their counsels and inclined to adopt them ; but in his 
heart he nourished a far different hope : Ormond, who for the 
last six months had found refuge in Paris, was about to reap- 
pear in Ireland, provided with the money and ammunition 
which the court of France had promised him ; he was upon 
his arrival, and in concert with lord Inchiquin, to conclude a 
peace with the catholics, and enter upon a vigorous war 
against the parliament ; so that the king, who was then to 
make his escape, might have a kingdom and soldiers ::{: " This 
new negotiation," he wrote (August) to sir William Hopkins, § 
who was charged to arrange his flight, " will be derisive, like 
the rest ; there is no change in my designs." The conference 
was officially opened on the 18th of September ; the king sat 
under a canopy at the upper end of the hall ; a little before 
him were the commissioners from Westminster seated round a 
table ; behind his chair stood his own councillors, perfectly 
silent ; for it was with the king in person that the parliament 
desired to treat ; any mediator would have seemed to lower 
its dignity ; and in their punctual submission, the commis- 
sioners were scarcely prevailed upon to permit the presence 

* Pari. Hist , iii., 1001 ; Journals, Lords, Aug. 24. 
t Clarendon, iii., 316, &c. ; Herbert, Memoirs, 72. 
i Carte, Life of Ormond, ii., 20— 3S. 

§ The king's letters to sir William Hopkins were published in the 
third edition of Wagstaft''s work, " Vindication of the Royal Martyr." 



416 HISTORY OF THE 



of any witnesses whatever. Charles, accordingly, maintained 
the discussion alone ; only, when he thought fit, he might re- 
tire into an adjoining room, to take the advice of his council- 
lors.* At the sight of their king thus solitary, thus thrown 
upon his own resources, an inward emotion thrilled the hearts 
of all present. Charles's hair had turned grey : an expres- 
sion of habitual sadness had blended with the haughtiness of 
his glance ; his deportment, his voice, his every feature re- 
vealed a proud but yet subdued soul, alike incapable of 
struggling against its destiny, or of yielding to it ; a touching 
and singular mixture of grandeur without power, of presump- 
tion without hope. The proposals of parliament, still the 
same, except a few unimportant modifications, were success- 
ively read and examined. Charles entered with a good grace 
into the discussion, calm, ready to answer any questions, 
taking no offence at objections, and skilfully making the most 
of the good points of his case ; astonishing, in short, his most 
prejudiced adversaries by the firmness of his mind, his gentle- 
ness, and his knowledge of the affairs and laws of the king- 
dom. " The king," said the earl of Salisbury one day to sir 
Philip Warwick, " has made marvellous progress." " No, 
my lord," replied Warwick, " the king was always what he 
is now, but your lordship perceives it too late." Buckley, one 
of the commissioners from the commons, urged him to accept 
the whole, assuring him that " the treaty once ended, the 
devil himself would not be able to break it." " Sir," said 
Charles, " if you call this a treaty, consider whether it be 
not like the fray in the comedy where the man comes out and 
says, ' There has been a fray and no fray ;' and being asked 
how that could be, ' why,' says he, ' there hath been three 
blows given, and I had them all.' Look whether this be not 
a parallel case : I have granted, absolutely, most of your pro- 
positions, and with great moderation limited only some few of 
them ; and you make me no concessions. "f He had, indeed, 
consented to the demands of parliament, as to the command 
of the sea and land forces, the nomination to the great offices 
of state, as to Ireland, even as to the legitimacy of the resist- 
ance which had brought on the civil war ; but instead of giv- 
ing up at once and without hesitation, he disputed every foot 

* Herbert, 72 ; Warwick, 323 ; Clarendon, ut sup 
t Warwick, 323. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 417 

of the ground he could no longer defend ; sometimes himself 
addressing different proposals to the house, sometimes seeking 
to elude his own concessions, pertinacious in asserting his 
right at the very moment he was giving it up, inexhaustible 
in subtleties and reticences, daily giving his adversaries some 
new reason to think that the hardest necessity was their only 
security against him. Moreover, he persisted as much from 
conscientious motives as with a view to the interest of his 
prerogative, in opposing the abolition of episcopacy and the 
severities which they desired to inflict on his principal sup- 
porters. Finally, after having solemnly promised that all 
hostilities in Ireland should cease,* he secretly wrote to Or- 
mond (Oct, 10) :")" " Obey my wife's orders, not mine, until I 
shall let you know I am free from all restraint ; nor trouble 
yourself about my concessions as to Ireland ; they will not 
lead to anything ;" and the day on which he had consented to 
transfer to parliament for twenty years the command of the 
army (Oct. 9),:}: he wrote to sir William Hopkins : " To tell 
you the truth, my great concession this morning was made 
only with a view to facilitate my approaching escape ; with- 
out that hope, I should never have yielded in this manner. 
If I had refused, I could, without much sorrow, have returned 
to my prison ; but as it is, I own it would break my heart, 
for I have done that which my escape alone can justify. "§ 

The parliament, though without any exact information, 
suspected all this perfidy ; even the friends of peace, the men 
most affected by the king's condition, and most earnest to save 
him, replied but hesitatingly to the charges of the independents. 
At the same time, the presbyterian devotees, though moderate 
in their political views, were invincible in their hatred of 
episcopacy, and would admit of no compromise, no delay, in 
reference to the triumph of the covenant. This idea, more- 
over, had fixed itself in men's minds, that after so many evils 
bi'ought upon the country by war, it was necessary that the 
conquered party should legally undergo its responsibility, and 
that to satisfy divine justice, manifested in the Holy Scriptures 
by so striking examples, the crime of the real culprits should 

* Journals, Lords, Dec. 1. 

t Carte, Life of Ormond, ii., Appendix, No. 31, 32, p. 17. 

I Pari. Hist., hi., 1048. 

§ Wagstaff, Vindication of the Royal Martyr, &c.. Appendix, 161. 



418 HISTORY OF THE 



be expiated by their punishment. The number of these was 
discussed : the popular fanatics demanded a multitude of 
exceptions to the amnesty which was to be proclaimed upon 
the restoration of peace ; the presbyterians only demanded 
seven,* but this with insurmountable determination, for they 
would have thought they accepted their own condemnation in 
giving up one of them. Narrow prejudices and feelings of 
hatred thus impeded even among the peace-party the success 
of the negotiations. Five times (Oct. 2, 11, and 27 ; Nov. 2, 
and 24), during their continuation, the king's offers or conces- 
sions were voted insufficient. Meantime, the period appointed 
for the duration of the confei'ences expired ; their term was 
thrice extended (Nov. 2, 18, and 24) ; it was decided (Oct, 20) 
that Sundays and holidays should not be reckoned,^ but all 
this without any further concession, without giving the negotia- 
tors any fresh instructions or the slightest discretion. The 
king, on his part, declared, upon his honor and faith, that he 
would go no further : " I will be like that captain," he said, 
" that had defended a place well, and his superiors not being 
able to relieve him, he had leave to surrender it ; but," he 
replied, " though they cannot relieve me in the time I demand 
it, let them relieve me when they can ; else I will hold it out 
till I make some stone in it my tombstone. And so will I do 
by the Church of England ;"J and the negotiation remained 
motionless and futile, serving no purpose but to display the 
impotent anxiety of the two parties, both obstinately blinding 
themselves to the necessity of the case.§ 

Yet around them all things were hastening onwards, and 
daily assuming a more threatening aspect. After two months 
of the most desperate resistance, Colchester, conquered by 
famine and sedition, at last surrendered (Aug. 27)j|| and the 
next day a court-martial condemned to death three of its 
bravest defenders, sir Charles Lucas, sir George Lisle, and 
sir Bernard Gascoign as an example, it was said, to future 
rebels who might be tempted to imitate them. In vain did 
the other prisoners, lord Capel at their head, entreat Fairfax 

* Lords Newcastle and Digby, sir Marmaduke Langdale, sir Richard 
Greenville, David Jenkins, sir Francis Doddington, and sir John Byron. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 1058. t Warwick, 327. 

§ Clarendon, State Papers, ii., 222—261; Pari. Hist, iii., 1002— 
1129 ; Warwick, ut sup. 

II Rushworth, ii., 4, 1241—1249. 



ENGLISH EEVOLUTION. 419 

to suspend the execution of the sentence, or at least that they 
should all undergo it, since all were alike guilty of the offence 
of these three. Fairfax, excited by the long struggle, or rather 
intimidated by Ireton, made no answer, and the condemned 
officers were ordered to be shot on the spot. Sir Charles 
Lucas was the first executed ; as he fell. Lisle ran and kissed 
him, and immediately standing up : " Soldiers," he exclaimed, 
" come nearer ; you are too far off." " Rest assured," they 
replied, " we'll hit you." " Comrades," answered Lisle, 
smiling, " I have been nearer, and you missed me ;" and he 
fell by the side of his friend. Gascoign was taking off his 
coat, when a reprieve arrived for him from the general.* 
Colchester being taken, there was no longer, in the eastern 
counties, any rallying point for insurrection. In the north, 
Cromwell, having conquered Hamilton, entered Scotland 
without obstacle (Sept. 20) ; the peasants of the western 
counties rose in a body at the first rumor of his victory ; and 
each parish, led by its minister, marched towards Edinburgh 
to drive the royalists thence ;'\ six miles from Berwick, at 
lord Mordington's seat, Argyle, who had come to meet him, 
had (Sept. 22):}: a long conference with him ; both as clear- 
sighted as daring, success did not blind them to the danger 
before them ; the Scottish royalists, powerful notwithstanding 
their defeat, and still in arms in many places, manifested a 
determination not to subject themselves unresistingly to a 
bloody reaction ; a treaty forthwith concluded (Sept. 26)§ 
secured to them full tranquillity and the enjoyment of their 
property, on condition of disbanding their troops, abjuring any 
engagement in favor of the king, and renewing the oath " to 
the holy league which ought never to have ceased to exist 
between the two kingdoms." Thus re-established in the pos- 
session of government, Argyle and his party received Crom- 
well at Edinburgh with great pomp ; the committee of the 
states, the municipal body, which had been thoroughly purged, 

* Clarendon, iii., 268. 

t This expedition was called in Scotland the insurrection of the 
" whigamores," from the word " whigagm," used by the peasants in 
driving their horses. Thence the name of Whigs, afterwards given to 
the party opposed to court, as the representative and successor of the 
most zealous Scottish covenanters. Burnet, i., 74. 

i Rushworth, ii., 4, 1282. 

§ Burnet, Memoirs of the Hamiltonsf, 367, 368 ; Laing, iii., 405. 



420 HISTORY OF THE 



the fanatic ministers and people, overwhelmed him with daily 
visits, speeches, sermons, and banquets ; but urged by the 
reports from Henry Martyn, and leaving with them Lambert 
and two regiments to maintain their power, he retraced with 
all speed the road to England (Oct. 11).* He had scarcely 
entered Yorkshire, where he seemed solely engaged in com- 
pleting the suppression of the insurrection, than numerous 
petitions were sent from that county, addressed to the commons 
only, demanding prompt justice upon the delinquents, what- 
ever their rank or name. At the same time, the same demand 
was expressed by other counties, and always presented or 
supported by the friends of Cromwell (Oct. 10 and Nov. 6). 
The presbyterians opposed it in the name of the great charter, 
and of the laws of the kingdom : " We have had, Mr. Speaker," 
said Denis Bond, an obscure republican, " many doctrines 
preached here by several gentlemen, against the power of this 
house ; such as that we cannot try my lord of Norwich 
but by his peers, because it is against Magna Charta ; but I 
trust ere long to see the day when we may have power to 
hang the greatest lord of them all, if he deserves it, without 
trial by his peers ; and I doubt not we shall have honest, 
resolute judges to do it, notwithstanding Magna Charta. "f 
The house rejected these petitions, but others immediately 
followed, far more explicit and formidable, for they came from 
the regiments of Ireton, Ingoldsby, Fleetwood, Whalley, and 
Overton, and explicitly demanded, of the commons that justice 
should be done upon the king, of Fairfax the re-establishment of 
the general council of the army, " the only remedy," they said, 
" against the disasters which threaten us, either by its repre- 
sentations to the house or by other means (Oct. 18 and 30). "ij: 
The council accordingly resumed its sittings, and, on the 20th 
of November, the speaker informed the house that certain 
officers were at the door, with colonel Ewers at their head, 
who were come in the name of the general and the army to 
present a paper to them ; it was a long remonstrance, similar 
to that which, seven years before (Nov. 21, 1641), § on the 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 1295, 1296. 

t Pari. Hist, iii., 1042; Rushworth, ii.,4, 1318; Whitelocke, 346. 
i Pari. Hist., iii., 1056, 1077 ; Rushworth, ii.,4, 1297, 1311 ; White- 
locke, 343, 1641. 

§ See p. 143 of this work. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 421 

same day, and in order effectually to break off with him, the 
commons had themselves addressed to the king. Adopting 
their example, the army enumerated in their petitions all the 
evils, all the fears of England, imputing them to the want of 
energy in the parliament, to its neglect of public interests, to 
its negotiations with the king ; it called upon it to bring him 
solemnly to trial, to proclaim the sovereignty of the people, to 
decree that henceforward the king should be elected by its 
representatives, to put an end to the present session, but pro- 
vide before separating for the equal distribution of the suffrage, 
for the regular meeting of future parliaments, for all the 
reforms desired by the well-affected, and threatening, finally, 
though in guarded expressions, that the army itself would pro- 
ceed to save the country, if it remained any longer compro- 
mised by the negligence or weakness of men who, after all, 
were only, like the soldiers, the delegates and servants of their 
fellow-citizens.* 

On hearing this read, a complete storm arose in the house ; 
the independents, Scott, Holland, and Wentworth, loudly de- 
manded that the army should forthwith receive the thanks of 
the house for these frank and courageous counsels ; the pres- 
byterians, some with indignation, others in terms flattering to 
the officers, urged the house to lay aside the remonstrance, 
and, by way of marking their displeasure, return no answer 
to it.f This expedient suited the timid as well as the bold ; 
it was adopted after two days' debate (Nov. 20 and 29), by a 
great majority (125 to 53). But the day had come when vic- 
tories served only to hasten the final defeat : out of doors, as 
well as within, excitement and confusion were at their height ; 
already there was talk of Cromwell's approaching return ;:]: 
already the army announced the design of marching upon 
London. § The royalists, losing all hope, now only thought 
of getting rid of, or avenging themselves on, their enemies, no 
matter by what means : several republican members were in- 
sulted and attacked in the streets ;|| hints reached Fairfax, 
even from France, that two cavaliers had resolved to assassi- 
nate him at St. Albans ;ir at Doncaster, a party of twenty 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 1077—1128 ; Whitelocke, 355. 
t Mercui-ius Pragmaticus, No. 35. X Rushworth, ii., 4, 1320. 

§ Whitelocke, 358 ; Pari. Hist, iii., 1137—1141. 
II Rushworth, ii., 4, i., 279 IT lb., 1280. 

36 



423 HISTORY OF THE 



men carried off Rainsborough, who commanded there, and 
three of them poniarded him at the moment he was endeavor- 
ing to escape from them (Oct. 29);* there was even a report 
that a plot was forming to murder eighty of the most influen- 
tial members as they left the house. f At last, amidst this an- 
archical fury, the news came, one upon the other, that in two 
days (Dec. 2) Cromwell would be at head-quarters ; that in 
the Isle of Wight, the governor, Hammond, suspected of too 
great consideration for the king and the parliament, had re- 
ceived orders from Fairfax (Nov. 25) to resign his post, to re- 
turn to the army, and transfer the charge of the king to colonel 
Ewers ;^ that on hearing this, Charles, seized with fear, had 
extended his concessions, closed the conferences at Newport, 
and that, on the same day (Nov. 28), the commissioners had 
set off with his definitive offers to parliament. 

They arrived the next day, most of them deeply affected by 
the peril in which they had left the king, and by his last fare- 
well : " My lords," he said to them, " you come to take leave 
of me, and I can scarcely believe we shall ever meet again ; 
but the will of God be done ! I give him thanks, I have made 
my peace with him, and I shall without fear suffer all it shall 
please men to do unto me. My lords, you cannot be ignorant 
that in my ruin you may already perceive your own, and that 
near at hand. I pray God that he may send you better friends 
than I have found. I am not ignorant of the plot contrived 
against me and mine ; but nothing affects me so much as the 
spectacle of the sufferings of my people and the presentiment 
of the evils prepared for them by men who, always talking of 
the public good, only seek to gratify their own ambition. "§ 
As soon as the commissioners had made their report (Dec. 1), 
though the king's new concessions differed but little from those 
they had so many times rejected, the presbyterians proposed 
to the commons to declare them satisfactory and fit to serve as 
the basis of peace. The motion was even supported by Na- 
thaniel Fiennes, son of lord Say, and lately one of the most 
violent of the independent leaders. The debate had already 
lasted several hours, when information was received of a letter 

* Clarendon, iii., 287 ; Whitelocke, 341 ; Rushworth, ii., 4, 1315. 
t Rushworth, ii., 4, 1270. t Pari. Hist., iii., 1133—1137. 

§ The Works of King Charles the Martyr, London, 1662, 424. 



• ENGLISH EEVOLUTION. 423 

from Fairfax to the common council, in which he announced 
that the army was marching upon London : " Question ! ques- 
tion !" immediately shouted the independents, eager to make 
the most of this alarm. But, contrary to their expectations, 
and notwithstanding all their efibrts, the debate was adjoui'ned 
till the next day.* It was then resumed more fiercely than 
ever, amid the movement of the troops who were pouring in 
on all sides, and taking up their quarters at St. James's, at 
York House, throughout Westminster and the city. The in- 
dependents still looked to fear to give them the victory : " By 
this debate," said Vane, " we shall soon guess who are our 
friends and who our enemies ; or, to speak m_ore plainly, we 
shall understand by the carriage of this business, who are the 
king's party in the house, and who for the people." " Mr. 
Speaker," quickly followed another member whose name is 
not known, " since this gentleman has had the presumption to 
divide this house into two parts, I hope it is as lawful for me 
to take the same liberty, and likewise to divide the house into 
two parts upon this debate. Mr. Speaker, you will find some 
that are desirous of a peace and settlement, and those are such 
as have lost by the war ; others you will find that are against 
peace, and these are such as have gained by the war. My 
humble motion, therefore, is this, that the gainers may con- 
tribute to the losers, that we may all be brought to an equal 
degree ; for till then the balance of the commonwealth will 
never stand right toward a settlement." The independents 
opposed this, but with some embarrassment, for in both parties 
personal interest exercised a power which they themselves 
scarcely ventured to deny. Rudyard, Stephens, Grimstone, 
Walker, Prideaux, Wroth, Scott, Corbet, and many others, 
successively supported and opposed the motion without the 
debate appearing to draw to a conclusion. Day declined ; 
several members had already retired ; one of the independents 
proposed to call for lights : " Mr. Speaker," said a presby- 
terian, " I perceive very well that the drift of some gentlemen 
is to take advantage not only of the terror now brought on us 
by the present approach of the army, but also to spin out the 
debate of this business to an unseasonable time of night, by 
which means the more ancient members of the house (whom 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 1142—1145. 



424 HISTORY OF THE 



they look upon as most inclined to peace) will be tired out and 
forced to depart before we can come to a resolution ; and 
therefore I hope the house will not agree to this last proposal ;" 
and, notwithstanding the clamors of the independents, the de- 
bate was again adjourned.* 

Two days after,-]- when they met, a dark rumor agitated the 
house ; the king, it was said on all sides, had been carried 
away from the Isle of Wight in the night, despite his resist- 
ance, and taken to Hurst Castle, a sort of prison, standing on 
the coast opposite the island, at the extremity of a barren, 
deserted, and unhealthy promontory. Vehemently called 
upon for an explanation, the independent leaders remained 
silent ; but the speaker read letters from Newport addressed 
to the house by major Ralph, who commanded in the absence 
of Hammond. The rumor was well founded, and all com- 
munication between the king and the parliament henceforward 
impossible, except with the consent of the army.^ 

On the 29th of November, towards evening, a few hours 
after the conference at Newport was over, and the commis- 
sioners departed, a man in disguise said to one of the king's 
people : " Troops have just landed in the island ; tell the 
king he will be carried away to-night." Charles immediately 
sent for the duke of Richmond, and the earl of Lindsey, and 
colonel Edward Cook, an officer who possessed his confidence, 
and asked how they could ascertain whether the report was 
true. It was useless to question major Ralph : nothing but 
short, vague answers were to be got from him : " The king 
may sleep quietly to-night ; upon my life, no one will disturb 
him to-night." Cook offered to mount his horse, ride round 
the coast, and in particular go to Carisbrook, where it was 
going on. The night was dark, it rained heavily, the service 
was a dangerous one; the king hesitated to accept it, but 
Cook insisted, and went off. He found the garrison of Caris- 
brook reinforced ; there were ten or twelve fresh officers, by 
whom captain Bowerman, who commanded there, was almost 
openly watched ; there was altogether an air of mysterious 
agitation. He returned in all haste to bring the king this 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 1145—1147 ; Ludlow, 117. 

t December 4th ; the debate had been adjourned till that day, be- 
cause the 3d was a Sunday, 
t Pari. Hist., iii., 1147, 1148. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 425 

information, when, on reaching Newport, towards midnight, 
he found the house the king occupied surrounded with guards ; 
there were some under every window, even inside the house, 
at the very door of the king's chamber, into which the smoke 
of their pipes penetrated. There was now no room for 
doubt ; the two lords conjured the king to attempt an escape 
that very hour, at all risks. This counsel was not agreeable 
to the timid sedateness of Charles ; he alleged the difficulty, 
the irritation it would cause in the army : " If they do take 
me," said he, " they must preserve me for their own sakes, for 
neither party can secure its own interests without joining 
mine with them." " Take heed, sir," said Lindsey, " lest 
your majesty fall into such hands as will not steer by such 
rules of policy. Remember Hampton Court." " Colonel," 
said Richmond to Cook, " how did you pass ?" Cook : "I 
have the word." Richmond : " Could you enable me to pass, 
too ?" Cook : " I have no doubt of it." Richmond put on a 
trooper's cloak ; they went out, passed through all the stations, 
and returned without any interruption. Standing with the 
king near a window, the two lords passionately renewed their 
entreaties ; the colonel, drenched with rain, stood alone before 
the fire : " Ned Cook," said the king, suddenly turning to- 
wards him, " what do you advise in this case ?" Cook hesi- 
tated to answer : " Your majesty," he said, " has here your 
privy councillors." "Ned, I command you to give me your 
advice." Cook : " Well, then, will your majesty allow me to 
address you a question ?" The king : " Speak." Cook : 
" Suppose I should not only tell your majesty, but prove to 
you that the ai"my intend forthwith to seize your person ; if 
I add, that I have the word, horses ready at hand, a vessel 
attending me, hourly expecting me, that I am ready and 
desirous to attend you, that this dark night seems made on 
purpose, that I see no difficulty in the thing, what would your 
majesty do ?" Charles remained silent for a moment ; then, 
shaking his head, he said : " No, they promised me and I 
promised them ; I will not break first." Cook : " But, sir, I 
presume that by ' they' and ' them' your majesty means the 
parliament ; if so, the scene is changed ; it is the army who 
want to throw your majesty into prison." The king : " No 
matter ; I will not break my word : good night, Ned ; good 
night, Lindsey ; I am going to rest as long as I can." Cook : 
36* 



426 HISTOKY OF THE 



" I fear it will not be long." The king : " As it please God." 
It was one o'clock ; they withdrew, and Charles went to bed, 
Richmond alone remained with him. 

At break of day there was a knocking at the door ; " Who 
are you ? what do you want ?" asked Richmond. " Officers 
of the army, who want to speak with the king." Richmond 
did not open the door, waiting for the king to be dressed ; the 
knocks were repeated, and with violence : " Open the door," 
said Charles to the duke ; and before he was out of bed, 
several officers, with lieutenant-colonel Cobbett at their head, 
rushed into the room. " Sir," said Cobbett, " we have orders 
to remove you." The king: "Orders, from whom?" Cobbett: 
" From the army." The king : " Whither am I to be removed ?" 
Cobbett : " To the castle." The king : " What castle ?" Cob- 
bett : " To the castle." The king: " The castle is no castle ; 
I am ready to follow you to any castle, but name it." Cobbett 
consulted his companions, and at last answered, " To Hurst 
castle." The king turned towards Richmond, and said ; 
" They could not name a worse j" and then addressing Cob- 
bett, he said : " Can I have none of my servants with me ?" 
Cobbett : " Only those absolutely indispensable." Charles 
named his two valets-de-chambre, Harrington and Herbert, 
and Mildmay his esquire-carver. Richmond went out to order 
breakfast, but before it was ready the horses were brought up. 
" Sir," said Cobbett, " we must go." The king got into the 
carriage without uttering a word, Harrington, Herbert, and 
Mildmay with him ; Cobbett came forward to get in, but 
Charles barred the way with his foot, and had the door imme- 
diately closed. They drove off under t]ie escort of a detach- 
ment of cavalry ; a little vessel was waiting at Yarmouth ; 
the king embarked in it, and, three hours after, was shut up in 
Hurst castle, having no communication from without, in a room 
so dai'k that at mid-day flambeaux were necessary, and under 
the guard of colonel Ewer, a far rougher and more dangerous 
jailer than Cobbett had been.* 

At this intelligence the presbyterians gave free course to 
their indignation : " The house," they cried, " guaranteed the 
king during his stay at Newport, respect, security, and liberty ; 
they are dishonored, undone, if they do not give marked resist- 

* Colonel Cook's narrative in Rushworth, ii., 4, 1344 — 1348 • Her' 
bert, 83 ; Pari. Hist., 1149—1151 ; Clarendon, iii., 359. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 427 

ance to this insolent rebellion," They voted accordingly that 
the king had been taken away without the knowledge or con- 
sent of the house ; and the debate relative to peace was re- 
sumed with redoubled earnestness. It had already lasted 
more than twelve hours ; the night was far advanced • though 
the assembly was still numerous, fatigue began to surmount 
the zeal of the more feeble and aged; a man rose, famous among 
the martyrs of public liberty, but who had only sat in the house 
three weeks — the same Prynne, who, twelve years before, had 
sustained so hard a struggle against the tyranny of Laud and 
of the court : " Mr. Speaker," said he, " first, I would remove 
two seeming prejudices, which else may enervate the strength 
of what I am about to say : some members, firstly, have 
aspersed me, that I am a Royal Favourite, alluding to the title 
of one of my works. All the royal favor I ever yet received 
from his majesty or his party, was the cutting off of my ears, 
at two several times, one after another, in a most barbarous 
manner ; the setting me upon three several pillories in a dis- 
graceful manner, for two hours at a time ; the burning of my 
licensed books before my face by the hand of the hangman ; 
the imposing of two fines upon me of 5000Z. a-piece ; exclusion 
from the house, and court, and university of Oxford ; the loss 
of my calling, almost nine years' space ; above eight years 
imprisonment, without pens, ink, paper, or books, except my 
Bible, and without access of friends, or any allowance of diet 
for my support. If any member envy me for such royal 
favors, I only wish him the same badges of favor, and then he 
will no more causelessly asperse me for a Royal Favorite, or 
apostate from the public cause." He spoke for several hours 
after this, minutely discussing all the king's proposals, all the 
pretensions of the army ; considering in turn in their different 
aspects, the state of parliament and of the country, grave with- 
out pedantry, earnest without anger, evidently elevated by the 
energy and disinterestedness of his conscience above the 
passions of his sect, the faults of his own character, and the 
usual extent of his own talent. " Mr. Speaker," he said, be- 
fore he concluded, " they further object that, if we discontent 
the army, we are undone ; they will all lay down their arms, 
as one commander of eminence hath here openly told you he 
must do, and serve us no longer ; and then, what will become 
of us and all our faithful friends ? If the army do so, I shall 



428 



HISTORY OF THE 



not much value the protection of such inconstant, anutinous, 
and unreasonable servants ; and I doubt not, if they forsake 
us on so slight a ground, God himself and the whole kingdom 
will stand by us ; and if the king and we shall happily con- 
clude this treaty, I hope we shall have no great need of their 
future service. However, fiat justitia, mat ccBlum j let us do 
our duty, and leave the issue to God." The house had listened 
to this speech with attention, with profound emotion ; it was 
nine o'clock in the morning ; the house had sat twenty-four 
hours ; there were still present two hundred and forty- 
four members ; they at length went to a division ; and it 
was resolved by one hundred and forty against one hun- 
dred and four, that the king's reply was an adequate basis 
of peace.* 

Power was escaping from the independents ; they had ex- 
hausted even fear ; all those members who could be influenced 
by it had given way or retired. In vaid did Ludlow, Hutch- 
inson, and a few others, in order to throw the house into con- 
fusion, demand leave to enter a protest against the decision ; 
their wish was rejected, as contrary to the usages of the 
house, and no notice taken of it in the way they desired. f 
After the rising of the house, the independent leaders as- 
sembled ; a great number of oflacers, arrived that morning 
from head-quarters, joined them : the peril was imminent ; 
but, masters of the army, they had that at command with 
which to resist it ; sincere fanatics or ambitious free-thinkers, 
no institution, no law, no custom, had any longer importance 
in their eyes ; with the former, it was held to be a duty to 
save the good cause ; the others were impelled by necessity. 
It was agreed that the day was come for action, and six of 
those present, three members of the house, and three officers, 
were charged to take immediate steps to ensure success. 
They passed several hours together, a list of the commons 
before them on the table, examining one by one the conduct 
and principles of each member, exchanging information, and 
sending orders to their confidants. Next day, the 6th of De- 
cember, at seven in the morning, under the direction of Ireton, 
and before Fairfax knew anything of the matter, the troops 
were in motion. With Skippon's consent, the parties of 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 1151—1240. f Ludlow, 117 ; Hutchinson, 301. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 429 

militia, who guarded Parliament, had been withdrawn ; two 
regiments, that of colonel Pride, infantry, and that of colonel 
Rich, cavalry, occupied Palace Yard, Westminster hall, the 
stairs, vestibule, and every access to the house ; at the door 
of the commons stood Pride, with the list of proscribed mem- 
bers in his hand, and near him lord Grey of Groby and an 
usher, who pointed them out to him as they arrived : " You 
must not go in," said Pride to each ; and he had had some of 
the most suspected seized and taken away. A violent tumult 
soon arose all round the house ; the excluded members tried 
every access, asserted their rights, and called upon the soldiers 
to vindicate them ; the soldiei's laughed and jeered. Some, 
Prynne amongst others, resisted strenuously ; " I will not stir 
of my own accord," said he ; and some officers pushed him 
insultingly down the stairs, delighted to make use of their 
party's power for the purposes of individual tyi'anny. Forty- 
one members were arrested in this manner, and shut up for 
the time in two adjoining rooms ; many others were excluded 
without being arrested. Two only, of those comprised in 
Pride's list, Stephens and colonel Birch, had succeeded in 
getting into the house ; they were drawn to the door under 
some pretext and immediately seized by the soldiers. " Mr. 
Speaker," cried Birch, endeavoring to force his way back 
into the house, " will the house suffer their members to be 
pulled out thus violently before their faces, and yet sit still ?" 
The house sent their sergeant-at-arms to order the members 
who were outside to come and take their seats ; Pride would 
not allow them to go : the sergeant was sent a second time, 
but could not get to them. The house resolved that they 
would not proceed to business until their members were ad- 
mitted, and appointed a committee to go to the general and 
demand their release. The committee had scarcely gone, 
when a message arrived from the army, presented by lieu- 
tenant-colonel Axtell, and some officers ; they demanded the 
official exclusion of the arrested members, and of all those 
who had voted for peace. The house returned no answer, 
waiting the result of the proceedings of their committee. The 
committee brought back word that the general in his turn 
refused to reply, until the house had come to some decision on 
the message of the army. Meantime, the excluded members 
had been taken away from Westminster, and led from one 



430 HISTORY OF THE 



quarter of London to another, from tavern to tavern, some- 
times crowded into coaches, sometimes hurried along on foot 
through the mud, surrounded by soldiers demanding their 
arrears. The preacher Hugh Peters, chaplain to Fairfax, 
came solemnly, sword on thigh, by the general's orders, to 
take down their names ; called upon by several of them to 
say by what right they were arrested — "By the right of the 
sword," said he. They sent to entreat Pride to hear them ; 
" I have no time/' was the answer ; " I've something else to 
do." Fairfax and his council, who were sitting at Whitehall, 
at last promised them an audience : they went thither ; but 
after waiting several hours, three officers came out apd an- 
nounced that the general was so busy, he could not receive 
them. Some embarrassment was visible under this contempt ; 
it was clear that the dominant party wished to avoid an inter- 
view with these men, lest their invincible pertinacity should 
necessitate too much rigor. Notwithstanding the audacity of 
their designs and of their acts, the conquerors still retained in 
the bottom of their hearts, without suspecting it themselves, a 
secret respect for ancient and legal order ; in drawing up their 
proscription list, they had confined themselves within the limits 
of what they deemed the necessity of the case, hoping that a 
qualified purification of parliament would suffice to secure 
their triumph. They saw with anxiety the house obstinately 
claiming their members, and their adversaries still retaining 
a powerful party, perhaps even the majority. But hesitation 
was impossible : they resolved to begin again. Next day (the 
7th) the troops once more closed up every avenue to the house ; 
the same scene was renewed ; forty more members were ex- 
cluded ; several others were arrested in their ov/n houses. 
They wrote to the house to be released ; but this time the 
defeat of the presbyterians was completed ; instead of answer- 
ing them favorably, the house adopted, by fifty votes to twenty- 
eight, a motion for taking the proposals of the army into con- 
sideration. This minority retired of their own accord, pro- 
testing that they would not return to the house until justice 
should be done to their colleagues ; and after the expulsion 
of one hundred and forty -three members, who, for the most 
part, were not arrested or silently quitted their confinement 
after a few hours, the republicans and the army at length 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 431 

found themselves, at Westminster, as well as elsewhere, in 
full possession of power.* 

Thenceforward everything gave way before them ; there 
was no resistance ; not a single opposing voice disturbed the 
party in the intoxication of their victory ; they alone spoke, 
they alone acted in the kingdom, and might anticipate the 
universal submission or consent of the country. The enthu- 
siasm of the fanatics was at its height — " Like Moses," said 
Hugh Peters to the generals, in a sermon before the remnant 
of the two houses — " like Moses, you are destined to take the 
people out of the bondage of Egypt : how will this be ac- 
complished ? that is what has not yet been revealed." He 
put his hands before his eyes, laid his head on the cushion, 
and, rising thence suddenly, exclaimed : " Now I have it, by 
revelation ! Now I shall tell you ! This army must root up 
monarchy, not only here, but in France, and other kingdoms 
round about ; this is to bring you out of Egypt. This army 
is that corner-stone, cut out of the mountain, which must 
dash the powers of the earth to pieces. 'Tis objected, the 
way we walk in is without precedent : what think you of the 
Virgin Mary ? was there ever any precedent before that a 
woman should conceive without holding the company of man ? 
This is an age to make examples and precedents in;""j" 
and the mob of the party gave way with transport to this 
mystical pride. Amidst all this exultation, on the very day 
when the last of the presbyterians retired from the commons 
(Dec. 7), Cromwell came and resumed his seat : " God is my 
witness," he repeated everywhere, " that I know nothing of 
what has been doing ill this house, but the work is in hand, I 
am glad of it, and now we must carry it through.":}: The 
house received him with the most marked demonstrations of 
gratitude. The speaker addressed to him official thanks for 
his campaign in Scotland ; and on leaving the house, he took 
up his lodgings at Whitehall, in the king's own apartments. § 
Next day, the army took possession of the cash-chests of the 
various committees, being forced, they said, to provide for 

*Parl. Hist, iii., 1240—1249; Rushworth, ii., 4, 1353—1356 ; Lud- 
low, 118; Hutchinson, 301; Walker, History of Independency, ii., 
29, &c. 

t Walker, ii., 50; Pari. Hist, iii., 1252. t Ludlow, 117. 

§ Pari. Hist, iii., 1246 ; Whitelocke, 357. 



432 HISTORY OF THE 



their own wants, in order no longer to be a burden to the 
country.* Three days after (Dec. 11), they sent to Fairfax, 
under the title of " A new Agreement of the People," a plan 
of a republican government, drawn up, it is said, by Ireton, 
and requested him to submit it for discussion to the general 
council of officers, who would afterwards present it to parlia- 
ment. f Meantime, and without taking the trouble of asking 
the consent of the lords, the commons repealed all the acts, 
all the votes lately adopted in favor of peace, and which would 
have placed obstacles in the way of the revolution (Dec. 12 
and 13). :j: At last, petitions reappeared that the king, who 
alone, they said, was guilty of so much bloodshed,^ should 
be brought to trial ; and a detachment was sent from head- 
quarters, with orders to bring him from Hurst castle to 
Windsor. 

On the 17th, in the middle of the night, Charles was 
awakened by the noise of the drawbridge being lowered, and 
of a troop of horse entering the castle-yard. In a few moments 
all was again silent ; but Charles was anxious ; before day- 
break, he rang for Herbert, who slept in an adjoining room : 
" Did you hear the noise about midnight ?" he inquired. " I 
heard the drawbridge lowered," said Herbert ; " but I dared 
not, without your majesty's orders, go out of my room at so 
unseasonable an hour." " Go and inquire what is the mat- 
ter." Herbert went, and soon returning, said major Harri- 
son had arrived. A sudden agitation appeared on the king's 
countenance ; " Are you sure," he said, " it is major Harri- 
son ?" Herbert : " Captain Reynolds told me so." The 
king: " Then I believe it ; but did you see the major?" Her- 
bert: "No, sir." The king: " Did Reynolds tell you what 
the major's business is ?" Herbert : " I did all I could to 
learn, but the only answer I could get was, that the occasion 
of his coming would soon be known." The king sent Her- 
bert away, and then recalled him in about an hour after. He 
found the king so deeply agitated, that he wept. " Why 
weep you ?" asked Charles. " Because I perceive your ma- 
jesty so much troubled and concerned at this news." " I am 
not afraid," said Charles ; " but do not you know that this is 
the man who intended to assassinate me, as by letter I was 

* Rushworth, ii., 4, 1356. + Ibid., ii., 4, 1358, 1365. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 1247—1249. § Rushworth, ii., 4, 1372. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 433 



informed, during the late treaty. To my knowledge I never 
saw the major, or did him an injury. I would not be taken 
by surprise ; this is a place fit for such a purpose, Herbert, 
I trust to your care ; go again and make further inquiry into 
his business." Herbert, this time more fortunate, learnt that 
the major was come to take the king to Windsor, in three 
days at latest ; and he hastened to inform Charles of it. 
" Well and good," he answered, his eyes brightening with 
joy ; " what, do they at last become less obdurate ? Windsor 
is a place I ever delighted in ; it will make amends for what 
I have suffered here." 

Two days after, in fact, lieutenant-colonel Cobbett came to 
tell the king that he had orders to take him immediately to 
Windsor, whither Harrison had already returned. Charles, 
far from objecting, hastened the departure himself. Three 
miles from Hurst he found a body of horse, charged to escort 
him to Winchester. Everywhere on his road a crowd of gen- 
tlemen, citizens, peasants, came round him ; some of them, 
mere sight-seekers, who retired after they had seen him pass, 
without any particular observation ; others deeply interested 
and praying aloud for his liberty. As he approached Win- 
chester, the mayor and aldermen came to meet him, and pre- 
senting him, according to custom, the mace and keys of the 
city, addi'essed to him a speech full of affection. But Cob- 
bett, rudely pushing his way towards them, asked if they had 
forgotten that the house had declared all who should address 
the king traitors ; whereupon, seized with terror, the func- 
tionaries poured forth humble excuses, protesting they were 
ignorant of the will of the house, and conjuring Cobbett to 
obtain their pardon. The next day the king resumed his 
journey. Between Alresford and Farnham another corps of 
cavalry was drawn up, waiting to relieve the party which had 
escorted him thus far ; the officer in command was good-look- 
ing, richly equipped, wearing a velvet Montero cap, a new 
buff coat, and a fringed scarf of crimson silk. Charles, 
struck with his countenance, passed slowly by him, and re- 
ceived a respectful military salute. Rejoining Herbert : 
" Who," asked the king, " is that officer ?" " Major Harri- 
son, sir." The king immediately turned round, and looked at 
him so long and so attentively that the major, confused, re- 
tired behind the troops to avoid his scrutiny. " That man,'" 
37 



434 HISTORY OF THE 



said Charles, " looks like a true soldier ; I have some judg- 
ment on faces, and feel I have harbored wrong thoughts of 
him." In the evening, at Farnham, where they stopped to 
sleep, Charles saw the major in a corner of the room ; he 
beckoned him to approach ; Harrison obeyed with deference 
and embarrassment, with an air at once fearless and timid : 
the king took him by the arm, led him into the embrasure of 
a window, and conversed for nearly an hour with him, and 
even spoke of the information he had received concerning 
him : " Nothing can be more false," said Harrison ; " this is 
what I said, and I can repeat it : it is, ' that the law was 
equally obligatory to great and small, and that justice had no 
respect to persons ;' " and he dwelt upon the last words with 
marked emphasis. The king broke off the discourse, sat 
down to table, and did not again address Harrison, though he 
did not appear to attach to what he had said any meaning 
which alarmed him. 

He was to reach Windsor the next day ; on leaving Farn- 
ham, however, he declared that he would stop at Bagshot, and 
dine in the forest, at lord Newburgh's, one of his most faithful 
cavaliers. Harrison dared not refuse, though so much eager- 
ness inspired him with some suspicions. They were well 
founded ; lord Newburgh, a great amateur of horses, had one 
which was considered the fleetest in all England ; for a long 
time past, in secret correspondence with the king, he had per- 
suaded him to lame the horse he rode, promising him one with 
which it would be easy for him to escape suddenly from his 
escort and baffle all pursuit through the bye-paths of the 
forest, with which the king was well acquainted. Accord- 
ingly, from Farnham to Bagshot, Charles was constantly com- 
plaining of his horse, saying that he would change it ; but 
on arriving at lord Newburgh's, he found that the one he 
had relied upon had been so severely kicked in the stable, 
that it was altogether unavailable. Lord Newburgh, greatly 
concerned, offered others to the king, which he said were ex- 
cellent, and would answer every purpose. But even with the 
fleetest the attempt would have been perilous ; for the troopers 
kept close to the king, and each carried a cocked pistol in 
his hand. Charles readily abandoned the idea of running 
such risks ; and in the evening, on arriving at Windsor, de- 
lighted to re-enter one of his own palaces, to occupy one of 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 435 

his own chambers, to find all things prepared to receive him 
nearly the same as heretofore when he came with his court to 
spend some holidays in that beautiful palace, far from being 
tormented by any sinister presages, he seemed almost to have 
forgotten that he was a prisoner.* 

The same day (Dec. 23),-|- almost at the same moment, the 
commons voted that he should be brought to trial, and ap- 
pointed a committee to draw up his impeachment. Notwith- 
standing the small number of members present, several voices 
rose against the measure. Some demanded that they should 
limit themselves to deposing him, as their predecessors had 
done with some of his ; others, without expressing it, would 
have wished him to be got rid of privately, so as to profit by 
his death without having to answer for it. But the daring 
free-thinkers, the sincere fanatics, the rigid republicans, in- 
sisted upon a solemn public trial, which should prove their 
power and proclaim their right. :j: Cromwell alone, in reality 
more eager for it than any other person, still hypocritically 
affected moderation. " If any one," he said,§ " had moved 
this upon design, I should think him the greatest traitor in the 
world ; but since Providence and necessity have cast us upon 
it, I pray God to bless our counsels, though I am not prepared 
on the sudden to give my advice." By one of those strange 
but invincible scruples, in which iniquity betrays itself while 
seeking a disguise, in order not to bring the king to trial with- 
out a law in the name of which he could be condemned, the 
house voted (Jan. 2)|| as a principle, that he had been guilty 
of treason in making war against the parliament ; and on the 
motion of Scott,ir an ordinance was forthwith adopted, institut- 
ing a high court** to try him. One hundred and fifty com- 
missioners were to compose it : six peers, three high judges, 
eleven baronets, ten knights, six aldermen of London, all the 
important men of the party, in the army, the commons, in the 
city, except St. John and Vane, who formally declared that 
they disapproved of the act, and would not take any part in it. 
When the ordinance was presented for the sanction of the 

* Herbert, 93, &c. ; Clarendon, iii., 377 ; Rushworth, ii., 4, 1375 ; 
Whitelocke, 363. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 1252. X Whitelocke, ut sup ; Clarendon, ii,, 380. 
§ Walker, 2, 54. || Pari. Hist., iii., 1253. IT Walker, 2, 5-5. 

** Pari. Hist, iii., 1254. 



436 HISTORY OF THE 



upper house (Jan. 2), some pride seemed to revive in that 
assembly, hitherto so servile that they seemed to have fully 
admitted their own nothingness : " There is no parliament 
without the king," maintained lord Manchester, " therefore 
the king cannot commit treason against parliament." " It has 
pleased the commons," said lord Denbigh, " to put my name 
to their ordinance ; but I would be torn to pieces rather than 
take part in so infamous a business." " I do not like," said 
the earl of Pembroke, " to meddle with affairs of life and 
death ; I shall neither speak against the ordinance nor consent 
to it ;" and the lords present, twelve in number, unanimously 
rejected it.* Next day, receiving no message from the lords, 
the commons appointed two of their members to go to the upper 
house, to have its journals laid before them, and to ascertain 
what resolution it had come tcf On their report (Jan. 4), 
they immediately voted that the opposition of the lords should 
not constitute an obstacle ; that the people being, after God, 
the source of all legitimate power, the commons of England, 
elected by and representing the people, possessed the sovereign 
power ; and by a fresh ordinance (Jan. 6),:|: the high court 
of justice, instituted in the name of the commons only, and 
reduced to one hundred and thirty-five members, § received 
orders to meet without delay to arrange the preliminaries. 

They met accordingly for this purpose in private, on the 
8th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 15th, 17th, 18th, and 19th of January, 
John Bradshaw, a cousin of Milton, and an eminent advocate, 
presiding — a man grave and gentle in his manners, but of a 
narrow, austere mind, a sincere fanatic and yet ambitious, 
inclined to avarice though ready to lay down his life for his 
opinions. Such was the state of public feeling, that insur- 
mountable dissension prevailed even in this court ; no sum- 
mons, no effort succeeded in collecting at these preparatory 
meetings more than fifty-eight members : Fairfax attended the 

* Pari. Hist., iii., 1256. f lb. J lb., 1257. 

§ The omission of six peers and the three chief justices, reduced the 
original number of commissioners to one hundred and forty-one ; two 
lawyers, Bradshaw and Nicholas, were added, which made it one hun- 
dred and forty-three. Yet the second ordinance contains only one 
hundred and thirty-five names ; there were doubtless other omissions 
which they did not take the trouble to explain. Alderman Roland 
Wilson, for instance, refused to participate in the trial, and his name is 
not found in the second list — Whitelocke, 366. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 437 

first meeting, but no other. Even among those who did attend, 
several only came to declare their opposition : this was the 
course pursued, among others, by Algernon Sidney, still young, 
but already influential in the republican party. Retired for 
some time to Penshurst castle, the seat of his father lord Lei- 
cester, when he heard of his nomination on the high court, he 
immediately went to London, and in the sittings of the 13th, 
15th, and 19th of January, though the question appeared de- 
cided, warmly opposed the trial. He above all things dreaded 
the people's conceiving an aversion for a republic, perhaps a 
sudden insurrection, which would save the king and lose the 
commonwealth beyond recall : " No one will stir," cried Crom- 
well, annoyed at these suggestions ; " I tell you, we will cut 
his head off v/ith the crown upon it." " Do what you please," 
answered Sidney ; " I cannot hinder you ; but I certainly 
will have nothing to do with this affair;" and he went out, 
and never returned.* At length, consisting only of members 
who readily accepted their mission, the court entirely occupied 
itself with arranging the form of the trial. John Cook, a coun- 
sellor of some reputation and the intimate friend of Milton, was 
appointed attorney-general, and as such Vv^as charged to take 
the lead in drawing up the act of accusation, and in supporting 
it on the trial. Elsynge, who had been clerk of the commons 
up to this period, having retired under pretext of illness, Henry 
Scobell was selected to take his place. They carefully dis- 
cussed what regiments and how many should be on service 
during the trial ; where sentinels should be stationed — some 
were placed even on the leads, and at every window which 
looked upon the hall — what barriers should be erected to keep 
the people apart, not only from the tribunal, but also from the 
soldiers. The 20th of January was appointed for the king to 
appear before the court at Westminster hall ; and so early as 
the 17th, as if his condemnation had already been pi'onounced, 
the commons had charged a committee to visit the palaces, 
castles, and residences of the king, and to draw up an exact 
inventory of his furniture, henceforth the property of par- 
liament.f 

When colonel Whychott, governor of Windsor, told the 

* Leicester's Journal, April ; Godwin, Hist, of the Commonwealth, 
ii., 669. 

t Pari. Hist., iii., 1259 ; State Trials, iv., 1045—1067. 
37* 



438 HISTORY OF THE 



king that in a few days he would be transferred to London : 
" God is everywhere," answered Charles, " alike in wisdom, 
power, and goodness."* Yet the news inspired him with great 
and unexpected uneasiness ; he had lived for the last three 
weeks in the most unwonted feeling of security, rarely and 
incorrectly informed of the resolutions of the house, comfort- 
ing himself with some reports from Ireland which promised 
him speedy assistance, and more confident, gayer even, than 
his servants had for a long time seen him : "In six months," 
he said, " peace will be re-established in England ; if not, I 
shall receive from Ireland, Denmark, and other kingdoms, the 
means of righting me ;"■!" and another day he said : " I have 
three more cards to play, the worst of which may give me 
back everything.":}: And yet one circumstance had lately 
disturbed him ; until almost the close of his stay at Windsor 
he had been treated and served with all the etiquette of court ; 
he dined in public, in the hall of state, under a canopy ; the 
chamberlain, esquire-carver, maltre-d'hotel, and cup-bearer 
performed their accustomed offices in the accustomed manner ; 
the cup was presented to him kneeling, the dishes were brought 
in covered, were tasted, and he enjoyed with tranquil gravity 
these solemn manifestations of respect. All at once, on the 
reception of a letter from head-quarters, there was a total 
change ; the dishes were brought in uncovered by soldiers, 
were no longer tasted, none knelt to him, the habitual etiquette 
of the canopy completely ceased. Charles bitterly grieved at 
this: "The respect and honor denied me," said he, "no 
sovereign prince ever wanted, nor even subjects of high de- 
gree, according to ancient practice ; is there anything more 
contemptible than a despised prince ?" and to avoid this insult 
he took his repast in his own rooni, almost alone, himself se- 
lecting two or three dishes from the list presented to him.§ 

On Friday, the 19th of January, a troop of horse appeared 
at Windsor, with Harrison at its head, appointed to remove the 
king ; a coach and six waited in the yard of the castle ; 
Charles entered it, and a few hours after once more re-entered 
London and St. James's palace, surrounded on all sides by 

* Herbert, 105. t Whitelocke, 366. 

J Leicester's Journal ; Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, 660. 
§ Herbert, 109. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 439 



guards, with two sentinels at the very door of his chamber, 
and Herbert, who slept by his bed-side, alone to serve him.* 

Next day, the 20th, towards noon, the high court, assembled 
in a secret sitting in the painted chamber, arranged the final 
details of their task ; they had scarcely finished prayers, when 
it was announced that the king, carried in a sedan between 
two ranks of soldiers, was at hand ; Cromwell ran to the win- 
dow, and turning round, pale, yet very animated : " My mas- 
ters, he is come — he is come !" he cried ; " and now we are 
doing that gi'eat work that the whole nation will be full of; 
therefore, I desire you to let us resolve here what answer we 
shall give the king, when he comes before us ; for the first 
question he will ask us will be, by what authority and com- 
mission we do try him." No one for a while answered; at 
last Henry Martynf said : " In the name of the commons and 
parliament assembled, and of all the good people of England." 
No objection was made, and the court proceeded in solemn 
order to Westminster hall, the lord-president, Bradshaw, at 
their head, with the sword and mace before him, preceded by 
sixteen officers armed with partisans. The president took his 
seat in a chair of crimson velvet ; below him was the clerk 
of the house, at a table with a rich Turkey cover on which 
were placed the mace and sword ; to the right and left, on 
seats of scarlet cloth, sat the members of the court ; at the two 
extremities were men-at-arms, who stood somewhat in advance 
of the tribunal. The court having taken their seats, the doors 
were opened and the crowd rushed in ; silence being restored, 
and the act of the commons read which authorized the court, 
the names were called over ; there were sixty-nine members 
present. " Mr. Sergeant," said Bradshaw, " bring in the 
prisoner, "ij: 

The king appeared, under the guard of colonel Hacker and 
thirty-two officers ; a chair of crimson velvet was prepared 
for him at the bar : he advanced, cast a long and severe look 

* Herbert, 110 ; Rushworth, ii., 4, 1395 ; State Trials, v., 1019 ; Nut- 
ley's evidence in Harrison's trial. 

t State Trials, v., 1201 ; sir Purbeck Temple's evidence in the trial of 
Henry Martyn. 

X Most of the facts of the king's trial are taken from two contempo- 
rary accounts inserted in the State Trials, iv., 989 — 1154, to which the 
reader is referred once for all. 



440 HISTOEY OF THE 



on the tribunal, sat down in the chair without removing his 
hat, suddenly rose again, looked behind him at the guard 
placed at the left, and the crowded spectators at the right of 
the hall, once more turned his eyes towards the judges, and 
then sat down amidst universal silence. 

Bradshaw rose immediately: "Charles Stuart, king of Eng- 
land," said he, " the commons of England, assembled in par- 
liament, taking notice of the effusion of blood in the land, 
which is fixed on you as the author of it, and whereof you are 
guilty, have resolved to bring you to a trial and judgment, 
and for this cause the tribunal is erected. The charges will 
now be read by the solicitor-general." 

The attorney-general. Cook, then rose to speak : " Silence !" 
said the king, touching him with his cane on his shoulder. 
Cook turned round, surprised and irritated ; the head of the 
king's cane fell off; a short but violent emotion appeared in 
his features ; none of his servants were near enough to pick 
up the head of the cane for him ; he stooped, took it up him- 
self, sat down, and Cook read the act of accusation, which, 
imputing to the king all the evils arising, first from his 
tyranny, then from the war, demanded that he should be 
bound to answer the charges brought against him, and that 
justice should be done upon him as a tyrant, traitor, and mur- 
derer. 

While this was reading, the king, still seated, looked tran- 
quilly, sometimes on the judges, sometimes on the public ; 
once, for a moment, he rose, turned his back to the tribunal 
to look behind him, and sat down again with an air at once 
of curiosity and indifference. He smiled at the words, 
" Charles Stuart, tyrant, traitor, and murderer," but said 
nothing. 

When Cook had finished : " Sir," said Bradshaw to the 
king, " you have heard the charge ; the court awaits your 
answer." 

The king : " I do wonder for what cause you convene me 
here. But lately I was in the Isle of Wight, and there I was 
treated with by divers honorable persons, lords, and commons, 
as to a treaty of peace, and the treaty was nigh perfection. I 
desire to knov/ by what authority I was hurried thence hither ; 
I mean lawful authority, for there are many unlawful powers, 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 441 

such as that of highwaymen. I desire to know this, I say, 
before I answer your charge." 

Bradshaw : " If you had pleased to pay attention to what 
the court said to you on your arrival, you would know what 
that authority is. They desire you, in the name of the Eng- 
lish people, of whom you were elected king, to answer." 

The king : " No, sir ; this I deny." 

Bradshaw : " If you demur to the junsdiction of the court, 
I must let you know the court overrules your demurrer. You 
must plead, or the court will take the charge 2'?'o confessoJ^ 

The king : " I tell you, England never was an elective 
kingdom ; that it has been for more than a thousand years an 
hereditary kingdom. Let me, then, know really by what 
authority I am summoned here. There is lieutenant-colonel 
Cobbett ; ask him whether it was not by force he brought me 
from the Isle of Wight. I will uphold, as much as any here, 
the just privileges of the house of commons. But I see no 
lords here : where are the lords that should go to make up a 
parliament 1* A king, also, is essential. Is this what you 
call bringing the king to his parliament ? " 

Bradshaw : " Sir, the court awaits from you a definitive 
answer. If what we tell you of our authority is not sufficient 
for you, it is sufficient for us ; we know it is founded on the 
authority of God and of the kingdom." 

The king : " It is neither my opinion nor yours that is to 
decide." 

Bradshaw : " The court have heard you ; you will be dis- 
posed of according to their orders. Take away the prisoner. 
The court adjourns to Monday next." 

The court retired ; the king departed with the same escort 
that brought him. As he got up, he looked at the sword placed 
upon the table: "I do not fear that," said he, pointing to it 
with his cane. As he went down stairs, a few voices were 
heard to cry — "Justice ! justice ! " but a far greater number 
shouted — " God save the king ! God save your majesty ! " 

On the Monday, at the sitting of the court, sixty-two mem- 
bers being present, the court commanded that entire silence 
should be observed, under pain of imprisonment ; but, never- 
theless, when the king arrived he was hailed with loud accla- 

* State Trials, v., lOSl ; in Cook's trial, evidence given by Nutley. 



442 HISTORY OF THE 



mations. The same discussion was renewed on both sides 
with equal pertinacity. " Sir," Bradshaw at length said, 
" neither you nor any one else will be allowed to dispute the 
jurisdiction of this court ; they sit here by the supreme au- 
thority of the nation, the commons assembled in parliament, 
to whom your ancestors ever were, and to whom you are, ac- 
countable." 

The king : " By your favor, show me one precedent." 

Bradshaw rose angrily, and said : " Sir, we sit not here to 
answer your questions. Plead to the charge ; guilty, or not 
guilty?"* 

The king : " You have not heard my reasons." 

Bradshaw : " Sir, you have no reasons to give against the 
highest of all jurisdictions." 

The king : " Then show me this jurisdiction, in which rea- 
son is not heard." 

Bradshaw : " Sir, we show it to you here ; it is the com- 
mons of England. Sergeant, take away the prisoner !" 

The king turned suddenly round towards the people, and 
said : " Remember that the king of England suffers, being not 
permitted to give his reasons for the liberty of the people ! " 
and an almost general cry arose : " God save the king ! "-j- 

The next sitting, on the 23d of January, exhibited the same 
scenes ; the sympathy of the people for the king became daily 
more earnest ; in vain did the irritated officers and soldiers 
shout the menacing cry of " Justice ! Execution !" the inti- 
midated crowd were silent for a moment ; but, upon some 
fresh incident, forgot their alarm, and " God save the king !" 
echoed on all sides. It was even heard among the troops : on 
the 23d, as the king was leaving after the rising of the court, 
a soldier of the guard cried aloud, " Sire, God bless you !" 
An officer struck him with his cane. " Sir," said the king, 
" the punishment exceeds the offence."^ At the same time 
representations were sent from abroad, and proceedings taken, 
not very formidable, it is true, and most of them not very ur- 
gent, but still fanning the flame of public indignation. The 
French minister delivered to the commons (Jan. 3) a letter 
from the queen, Henrietta-Maria, soliciting permission to 

* State Trials, v., 1086, in the trial of the regicides, and particiilarly 
in that of Cook ; John Heme's evidence. 
■} State Trials, v., 1086. t Herbert, 114. 



ENGLISH KKVOLUXION. 44j 

come and join her husband, either to persuade him to yield 
to their wishes or to give him the consolations of affection.* 
The prince of Wales wrote to Fairfax and to the council of 
officers, in the hope of awakening in their breasts some feel- 
ing of loyalty. f The Scottish commissioners officially pro- 
tested in the name of that kingdom, against all that was going 
on (Jan. 6 and 22)4 The early arrival of an extraordinary 
embassy from the States, sent to interpose in the king's favor, 
was announced ; already John Cromwell, an officer in the 
service of the Dutch, and cousin to Oliver, was in London, 
besetting the lieutenant-general with almost threatening re- 
proaches. § The printing of a manuscript entitled Royal 
Sighs, the production, it was said, of the king himself, and of 
a nature to excite an insurrection for his deliverance, was dis- 
covered and its publication stopped. |j On all sides, in a 
word, if not great obstacles, at least new causes of fermenta- 
tion arose, which would assuredly disappear, the republicans 
promised themselve?, as soon as the question should be put to 
an end ; but which, so long as it remained in suspense, ren- 
dered every day's delay more embarrassing and perilous. 

They resolved to relieve themselves at once from this situa- 
tion, to cut short any further debate, and that the king should 
only appear again to receive his sentence. Whether from a 
lingering respect for legal forms, or to produce, if required, 
new proofs of Charles's bad faith in the negotiations, the court 
employed the 24th and 25th in collecting evidence from thirty- 
two witnesses. On the 25th, at the close of their sitting, and 
almost without any discussion, they voted the king's con- 
demnation as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and enemy to the 
country. Scott, Martyn, Harrison, Lisle, Say, Ireton, and 
Love, were charged to draw up the sentence. There were 
only forty-six members present that day. On the 26th, sixty- 
two members being assembled with closed doors, the form 
of the sentence was determined upon after some discussion. 
The court adjourned to the following day, then to pronounce 
it. On the 27th, at noon, after two hours' conference in the 
painted chamber, the sitting began, according to custom, by 

* Clarendon, iii., 368. f Ib-> 296. t Pari. Hist., iii., 1277, &c. 
§ Banks, Critical Review, &c., 103; Mark Noble, Memoirs of the 
Protectoral House, &c., i., 50. 
II The famous EJxcoj' BamXiKfj. 



444 HISTORY OF THB 



calling over the names ; when Fairfax's was called : " He 
has too much wit to be here !" exclaimed the voice of a woman 
from the gallery. After a moment's surprise and hesitation, 
the clerk proceeded : sixty-seven members were present. 
When the king entered the hall, a violent cry of " Execu- 
tion ! Justice ! Execution !" was raised. The soldiers were 
very excited, Axtell, who commanded them, animating their 
shouts ; a few groups scattered here and there about the hall 
joined in these clamors ; but the crowd was silent and in con- 
stemation. 

"Sir," said the king to Bradshaw, before he sat down, "I 
shall ask to speak a word ; I hope I shall not give you occa- 
sion to interrupt me." 

Bradshaw : " You shall answer in your turn ; first listen to 
the court." 

The king : " Sir, by your favor, I desire to be heard. It 
is but a word. An immediate judgment " 

Bradshaw : " Sir, you shall be heard in fit time ; you must 
first hear the court." 

The king : " Sir, I desire .... what I have to say is con- 
cerning that which the court is, I think, about to pronounce ; 
and it is not easy, sir, to recall a precipitate judgment." 

Bradshaw : " You will be heard, sir, before judgment is 
passed. Till then you must abstain from speaking." 

On hearing this promise some serenity re-appeared on the 
king's countenance ; he sat down : Bradshaw went on : 

" Gentlemen, it is well known to you all that the prisoner 
here at the bar has several times been brought before the 
court to answer a charge of high treason and other great 
crimes, brought against him in the name of the people of 
England—" 

" It's a lie ! . Not one half of them," cried the same voice 
which had answered at the name of Fairfax : " Where are 
they or their consents ? Oliver Cromwell is a traitor !" 

The whole assembly was startled : all eyes were turned 
towards the gallery. " Down with the w — ," cried Axtell, 
" shoot them !" The speaker was soon found to be lady 
Fairfax.* 

A general excitement arose : the soldiers, though nume- 

• State Trials, 1150 ; Evidence of sir Purbeck Temple. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 445 

rously interspersed with the crowd, and using little ceremony, 
had much difficulty in repressing it : order being at length 
somewhat re-established, Bradshaw recited the king's obsti- 
nate refusal to answer to the charge, the notoriety of the crimes 
imputed to him, and then declared that the court were agreed 
as to the sentence, but consented, before pronouncing it, to 
hear the prisoner's defence, provided he would desist from 
denying their jurisdiction. 

" I ask," said the king, " to be heard in the painted cham- 
ber, by the lords and commons, on a proposal which is of far 
greater importance to the peace of the kingdom and the 
liberty of my subjects than to my own preservation." 

Deep agitation pervaded the court and the assembly ; 
friends and enemies all endeavored to imagine with what 
intention the king requested this conference with the two 
houses, and what he could have to propose to them ; a thou- 
sand different suggestions went about ; the majority seemed 
to think that he wished to abdicate the crown in favor of his 
son. But whatever it might be that he intended, the per- 
plexity of the court was extreme ; the party, notwithstanding 
their triumph, did not feel itself in a position either to lose 
time or to run fresh hazards ; among the judges themselves, 
some indecision was perceptible. To escape the peril, Brad- 
shaw maintained that the king's request was only a trick still 
to escape the jurisdiction of the court ; a long and close debate 
took place between them on this subject. Charles again and 
again insisted, more and more urgently, on being heard ; but 
on each occasion the soldiers round him became more and 
more noisy and abusive ; some lit their pipes and blew the 
smoke towards him ; others murmured in coarse terms at 
the slowness of the trial ; Axtell laughed and joked aloud. 
In vain did the king several times turn towards them, and 
sometimes by gesture, sometimes by words seek to obtain a 
few moments of attention or at least of silence ; he was an- 
swered by the cries: "Justice! Execution!" At length, 
deeply agitated, almost beside himself: " Hear me ! hear me !" 
he cried, in passionate accents ; the same shouts were re- 
newed :* suddenly an unexpected movement exhibited itself 
among the judges. Colonel Downs, one of the members of 

* State Trials, v., 1150, 1151 ; in Axtell's Trial. 
38 



446 HISTORY OF THE 



the court, became violently agitated and sought to rise from 
his chair ; in vain did the colleague on each side, Cawley and 
colonel Wanton, seek to keep him down, and compose him : 
" Have we hearts of stone ?" he said ; " are we men ?" " You 
will ruin us and yourself," said Cawley. " No matter," re- 
plied Downs, " if I die for it, I must do it." On hearing this, 
Cromwell, who sat beneath him, suddenly turned round : 
"Colonel," said he, " are you yourself? What mean you? 
Can't you be quiet ?" " Sir," answered Downs ; " no, I can- 
not be quiet ;" and immediately rising, he said to the presi- 
dent : " My lord, I am not satisfied to give my consent to this 
sentence, and have reasons to offer to you against it, and I 
desire the court may adjourn to hear me, and deliberate." 
" If any one of the court," gravely answered Bradshaw, " be 
unsatisfied, the court must adjourn j" and they all immedi- 
ately passed into an adjoining room. 

They were no sooner there than Cromwell roughly assailed 
the colonel, upbraiding him for the difficulty and confusion in 
which he was involving the court. Downs defended himself 
with agitation, alleging that perhaps the king's proposals would 
be satisfactory ; that, after all, what they had sought, what 
they still sought, were good and solid guarantees ; that they 
ought not to refuse, without knowing what they were, those 
which the king wished to ,offer ; that they owed to him at 
least to hear him, and to respect, in his person, the ordinary 
rules of common justice. Cromwell heard him with rude 
impatience, moving round and round him, and interrupting 
him at every word : " At last," said he, " we see what great 
reason the gentleman had to put such a trouble and disturb- 
ance upon us ; sure, he doth not know that he hath to do with 
the hardest hearted man that lives upon the earth. However, 
it is not fit that the court should be hindered from their duty 
by one peevish man. The bottom of all this is known ; he 
would fain save his old master ; let us, without more ado, go 
back and do our duty." In vain did colonel Hai'vey and 
some others support the opinion of Downs ; the discussion 
was speedily repressed ; in half an hour, the court returned 
to the hall, and Bradshaw declared to the king that they re- 
jected his proposition.* 

* State Trials, v., 1197, 1205, 1211, 1218; in the trials of Harvey, 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 447 

Charles seemed quite overcome, and renewed the applica- 
tion but hesitatingly ; " If you have nothing more to say," 
said Bradshaw, " we shall proceed to sentence." " Sir, I 
have nothing more to say," replied the king ; " but I shall 
desire that what I have said may be entered." Bradshaw, 
without answering, told him he was about to hear his sen- 
tence ; but before having it read, he addressed to the king a 
long speech, a solemn apology for the conduct of parliament, 
in which all the king's faults were set forth, and all the evils 
of the civil war cast upon him alone, since his tyranny had 
made resistance a duty as well as a necessity. His language 
was stern, bitter, but grave, godly, free from insult, the result 
of a conviction evidently profound, though blended with some- 
what of vindictive emotion. The king listened without in- 
terrupting him, grave as himself. Yet, as the speech drew 
near its conclusion, a visible agitation took possession of him ; 
as soon as Bradshaw stopped, he attempted to speak. Brad- 
shaw opposed it, and gave orders to the clerk to read the 
sentence ; when he had done : " The sentence now read and 
published," he said, " is the act, sentence, judgment, and re- 
solution of the whole court;" and the whole court stood up in 
sign of assent. " Sir," suddenly exclaimed the king, " will 
you hear me a word ?" 

Bradshaw : " Sir, you are not to be heard after the sen- 
tence." 

The king : " No, sir ?" 

Bradshaw : " No, sir, by your favor. Guards, withdraw 
the prisoner !" 

The king : " I may speak after sentence, by your favor, 
sir ; I may speak after my sentence, ever. By your favor." 

(" Hold !" said Bradshaw.) " The sentence, sir, 1 say, 

sir, I do 1 am not suffered to speak : expect what justice 

other people will have !" 

The soldiers here surrounded him, and removing him from 
the bar, carried him with violence to the place where his sedan 
waited for him ; as he went down the stairs, he had to endure 
the grossest insults ; some threw their lighted pipes in his 
way ; others blew the smoke of their tobacco in his face ; all 

Robert Lilburne, Downs, and Wayte, and from the narrative of the 
accused themselves. 



448 HISTORY OF THE 



cried close to hiin, " Justice ! execution !"* Yet the people 
still mixed up with these cries, the shout, " God save your 
majesty ! God deliver your majesty from the hands of your 
enemies !" and till he had seated himself in the sedan, the 
bearers stood with their hats off, notwithstanding Axtell's 
orders to the contrary, who even struck them for their disobe- 
dience. They set out for Whitehall ; the troops lined each 
side of the road ; before the shops, at every door, every win- 
dow, there was a crowd of people, most of them silent, some 
weeping, others praying aloud for the king. Every few 
minutes, the soldiers, to celebrate their triumph, renewed the 
cry, " Justice ! Justice ! Execution !" But Charles had 
regained his accustomed serenity ; and, too proud to believe 
in the sincerity of their hatred, said, as he came out of the 
chair : " Poor souls, for a piece of money they would do so for 
their commanders !"f 

As soon as he arrived at Whitehall ; " Hark ye !" said he 
to Herbert, " my nephew the prince elector, and some other 
lords that love me, will endeavor to see me, which I would 
take in good part, but my time is short and precious, and I 
am desirous to improve it the best I may ; I wish to employ 
it in preparation ; I hope they will not take it ill, that none 
have access to me but my children. The best office they can 
now do for me is to pray for me." He asked to see his 
younger children, the princess Elizabeth and the duke of 
Gloucester, who had remained in charge of parliament, and 
Juxon, bishop of London, of whom we had already, through 
the intervention of Hugh Peters, obtained religious assistance. 
Both requests were granted. Next day, the 28th, the bishop 
went to St. James's, whither Charles had been transferred ; 
when he saw the king, he burst into an agony of grief: 
" Leave off this, my lord," said Charles ; " we have not time 
for it ; let us think of our great work, and prepare to meet 
that great God, to whom, ere long, I am to give an account 

* State Trials, v., 1151, in Axtell's trial. A witness deposed, on the 
trial of Augustin Garland, one of the judges, that he had seen him at 
the foot of the stairs spit in the king's face. Garland absolutely de- 
nied it, and the judges did not insist. Herbert, who accompanied the 
king, does not mention it either. I have not, therefore, thought proper 
to mention it as authentic, through Warwick, who had almost all the 
details inserted in his memoirs from bishop Juxon, expressly affirms it. 

t State Trials, iv., 1130 ; Herbert, Memoirs, 114 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 449 

of myself. I hope I shall do it with peace, and that you will 
assist me therein. We will not talk of these rogues, in whose 
hands I am ; they thirst after my blood, and they will have 
it, and God's will be done ! I thank God, I heartily forgive 
them ; and I will talk of them no more." He passed the rest 
of the day in pious conference with the bishop ; it was with 
great difficulty he obtained permission to be left alone in his 
room, where, at first, colonel Hacker had posted two soldiers ; 
and, as it were, all the while Juxon was with him, the door 
was opened every few minutes by the sentinel on duty, to 
make sure that the king was there. As he had anticipated, 
his nephew the prince-elector, the duke of Richmond, the 
marquis of Hertford, the earls of Southampton and Lindsey, 
and other old servants, came to see him ; but he did not re- 
ceive them. Mr. Seymour, a gentleman in the service of the 
prince of Wales, arrived the same day from the Hague,* 
bearer of a letter from the prince ; the king ordered him to be 
admitted, read the letter, threw it into the fire, gave his 
answer to the messenger, and sent him away immediately. 
Next day, the 29th, almost at dawn of day, the bishop re- 
turned to St. James's. Morning prayers over, the king pro- 
duced a box, containing broken crosses of the order of St. 
George and of the garter : " You see," he said to Juxon, " all 
the wealth now in my power to give my two children." The 
children were then brought to him ; on seeing her father, the 
princess Elizabeth, twelve years old, burst into tears ; the 
duke of Gloucester, who was only eight, wept also when he 
saw his sister weeping ; Charles took them upon his knees, 
divided his jewels between them, consoled his daughter, gave 
her advice as to the books she was to read to strengthen her- 
self against popery, charged her to tell her brothers that he 
had' forgiven his enemies, her mother that in thought he had 
ever been with her, and that to the last hour he loved her as 
dearly as on their marriage day ; then turning towards the 
little duke : " My dear heart," he said, " they will soon cut 
off thy father's head." The child looked at him fixedly and 
earnestly : " Mark, child, what I say ; they will cut off my 
head, and perhaps make thee king ; but mark what I say, 

* According to Tomlinson's evidence (State Trials, v., 1179), it was 
on the day of his death, and at Whitehall, that the king received Mr. 
Seymour ; I have followed Herbert's account — Memoirs, ut sup. 

38* 



450 HISTORY OF THE 



thou must not be king so long as thy brothers Charles and 
James live, but they will cut off thy brothers' heads if they 
can catch them ; and thine, too, they will cut off at last ! 
Therefore, I charge thee, do not be made a king by them." 
" I will be torn in pieces first !" replied the child, with great 
emotion. Charles fervently kissed him, put him down, kissed 
his daughter, blessed them both, and called upon God to bless 
them ; then suddenly rising : " Have them taken away," be 
said to Juxon ; the children sobbed aloud ; the king, standing 
with his head pressed against the window, tried to suppress his 
tears ; the door opened, the children were going out, Charles 
ran from the window, took them in his arms, blessed them 
once more, and at last tearing himself from, their caresses, fell 
upon his knees and began to pray with the bishop and Her- 
bert, the only witnesses of this deeply painful scene.* 

On the same morning the high court had met, and appointed 
the execution to take place next day, January 30, between 
ten and five o'clock ; but when it became necessary to sign 
the fatal order, it was with great difficulty the commissioners 
could be got together ; in vain two or three of the most de- 
termined stood outside the door, stopped such of their col- 
leagues as were passing by towards the house of commons, 
and called upon them to come and affix their names. f Several 
even of those who had voted for the condemnation, kept out of 
the way, or expressly refused to sign. Cromwell himself, gay, 
noisy, daring as ever, gave way to his usual coarse buffoonery ; 
after having signed himself — he was the third to do so — he 
smeared with ink Henry Martyn's face who sat by him, and 
who immediately did the same to him. Colonel Ingoldsby, 
his cousin, who had been appointed a member of the court, 
but had never taken his seat, accidentally came into the hall : 
" This time," said Cromwell, " he shall not escape ;" and 
laughing aloud, he seized Ingoldsby, and with the assistance 
of a few other members, put the pen between his fingers, 
and guiding his hand, obliged him to sign.:]: Fifty-nine sig- 
natures were at last collected ; many, either from agitation 
or design, such mere scrawls that it was almost impossible to 

*Rushworth, ii., 4, 1398 : Journals, Commons, Jan. 20. 
t State Trials, v., 1219 ; Thomas Wayte's trial. 

j Harris, Life of Cromwell, 201 ; Mark Noble's Memoirs of the Pro- 
tectoral House, i., 118. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 451 

make them out. The order was addressed to colonel Hacker, 
colonel Huncks, and lieutenant Phayre, who were charged to 
see to the execution. Hitherto the ambassadors extraordi- 
nary from the States, Albert Joachim and Adrien Pauw, 
who had been five days in London, had vainly solicited an 
audience of parliament ; neither their official request, nor their 
private applications to Fairfax, Cromwell, and some other 
officers, had obtained it for them. They were suddenly in- 
formed, about one o'clock, that they would be received at two 
by the lords, at three by the commons. They went im- 
mediately, and delivered their message ; an answer was pro- 
mised them, and as they returned to their lodgings they saw 
commencing, in front of Whitehall, the preparations for the 
execution. They had received visits from the French and 
Spanish ambassadors, but neither would join in their pro- 
ceedings ; the first satisfied himself with protesting, that for a 
long time past he had foreseen this deplorable event and done 
all in his power to avert it ; the other said he had not yet re- 
ceived orders from his court to interfere in the matter, though 
he every hour expected them. Next day, the 30th, about 
twelve, a second interview with Fairfax, in the house of his 
secretary, gave the Dutch ambassadors a gleam of hope ; the 
general had been moved by their representations, and, seem- 
ing at length resolved to rouse himself from his inaction, pro- 
mised to go immediately to Westminster, to solicit at least a 
reprieve. But as they left him, before the very house in 
which they had conversed with him, they met a body of 
cavalry, clearing the way ; all the avenues to Whitehall, all 
the adjacent streets, were equally filled with them ; on all 
sides they heard it said that everything was ready, and that 
the king would soon arrive.* 

And so it was : early in the morning, in a room at White- 
hall, beside the bed from which Ireton and Harrison had not 
yet risen, Cromwell, Hacker, Huncks, Axtell, and Phayre 
had assembled to draw up the last act of this fearful pro- 

* These details are taken from the correspondence of the ambassadors 
themselves with the States, of which a translation is appended to the 
present volume. They prove how doubtful, notwithstanding Herbert's 
narrative, whom in other respects Mr. Godwin is wrong in disbeliev- 
ing, is the anecdote after which almost all the historians have related 
that Ireton and Harrison had passed the time in prayers with Fairfax 
to conceal from him what was going on. 



452 HISTORY OF THE 



ceeding, the order to the executioner : " Colonel," said Crom- 
well to Huncks, " it is you who must write and sign it." 
Huncks obstinately refused : " What a stubborn grumbler !" 
said Cromwell. " Colonel Huncks," said Axtell, " J am 
ashamed of you ; the ship is now coming into the harbor, and 
will you strike sail before we come to anchor ?" Huncks 
persisted in his refusal ; Cromwell, muttering between his 
teeth, sat down, wrote the order himself and presented it to 
colonel Hacker, who signed it without objection.* 

Nearly at the same moment, after four houi's' profound 
sleep Charles left his bed : " I have a great work to do this 
day," he said to Herbert ; " I must get up immediately ;" and 
he sat down at his dressing-table. Herbert, in his agitation, 
combed his hair with less care than usual : " I pray you," 
said the king, " though my head be not long to remain on my 
shoulders, take the same pains with it as usual ; let me be as 
trim to-day as may be ; this is my second marriage day ; for 
before night I hope to be espoused to my blessed Jesus." As 
he was dressing, he asked to have a shirt on more than ordi- 
nary : " The season is so sharp," he said, " as may make me 
shake, which some observers will imagine proceeds from fear. 
I would have no such imputation ; I fear not death ; death is 
not terrible to me. I bless my God I am prepared." At day- 
break the bishop arrived and commenced the holy service ; as 
he was reading, in the 27th chapter of the gospel according 
to St. Matthew, the passion of Jesus Christ, the king asked him : 
" My lord, did you choose this chapter as being applicable to 
my present condition ?" " May it please your majesty," said 
the bishop, " it is the proper lesson for the day, as the calendar 
indicates." The king appeared deeply affected, and con- 
tinued his prayers with even greater fervor. Towards ten, 
a gentle knock was heard at the door ; Herbert did not stir ; a 
second knock was heard, rather louder, but still gentle : " Go 
and see who is there," said the king : it was colonel Hacker : 
" Let him come in," said the king. " Sir," said the colonel, 
with a low and half-trembling voice, " it is time to go to White- 
hall ; but you will have some further time to rest there." " I 
will go directly," answered Charles ; " leave me." Hacker 
went out : the king occupied a few moments more in mental 

* State Trials, v., 1148—1180 ; Axtell and Hacker's trial. 



ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 453 

prayer ; then, taking the bishop by the hand : " Come," said 
he, " let us go ; Herbert, open the door. Hacker is knocking 
again;" and he went down into the park, through which he 
was to proceed to Whitehall. 

Several companies of infantry were drawn up there, form- 
ing a double line on each side of his way ; a detachment of 
halberdiers marched on before, with banners flying ; the 
drums beat ; not a voice could be heard for the noise. On the 
right of the king was the bishop ; on the left, uncovered, 
colonel Tomlinson, the officer in command of the guard, 
whom Charles, touched by his attentions, had requested not 
to leave him till the last moment. He talked with him, on 
the way, of his funeral, of the persons to whom he wished the 
care of it to be entrusted, his countenance serene, his eye 
beaming, his step firm, walking even faster than the troops, 
and blaming their slowness. One of the officers on service, 
doubtless thinking to agitate him, asked him whether he had 
not concurred with the duke of Buckingham in the death of 
the king his father : " Friend," answered Charles, with gentle 
contempt, " if I had no other sin, I speak it with reverence t6 
God's majesty, I assui'e thee I should never ask him pardon."* 
Arrived at Whitehall he ascended the stairs with a light step, 
passed through the great gallery into his bed-room, where he 
was left alone with the bishop, who was preparing to adminis- 
ter the sacrament. Some independent ministers, Nye and 
Goodwin among others, came and knocked at the door, saying 
that they wished to offer their services to the king : " The king 
is at prayers," answered Juxon : they still insisted. " Well, 
then," said Charles to the bishop, " thank them from me for 
the tender of themselves, but tell them plainly, that they that 
so often causelessly prayed against me, shall not pray with me 
in this agony. They may, if they please, I'll thank them for 
it, pray for me." They retired ; the king knelt, received the 
communion from the hands of the bishop, then rising with 
cheerfulness : " Now," said he, " let the rogues come ; I have 
heartily forgiven them, and am prepared for all I am to un- 
dergo." His dinner had been prepared ; he declined taking 
any : " Sire," said Juxon, " your majesty has long been fast- 
ing ; it is cold ; perhaps on the scaffold some faintness ." 

" You are right," said the king, and he took a piece of bread 

* Warwick, 342. 



454 HISTORY OF THE 



and a glass of wine. It was now one o'clock: Hacker knocked 
at the door ; Juxon and Herbert fell on their knees : " Rise, 
my old friend," said Charles, holding out his hand to the 
bishop. Hacker knocked again ; Charles ordered the door to 
be opened : " Go on," said he, " I follow you." He advanced 
through the banqueting hall, still between a double rank of 
soldiers ; a multitude of men and women, who had rushed in 
at the peril of their lives, stood motionless behind the guard, 
praying for the king as he passed, uninterrupted by the 
soldiers, themselves quite silent. At the extremity of the hall 
an opening made in the wall led straight upon the scaffold, 
which was hung with black ; two men, dressed as sailors and 
masked, stood by the axe. The king stepped out, his head 
erect, and looking around for the people, to address them ; but 
the troops occupied the whole space, so that none could ap- 
proach : he turned towards Juxon and Tomlinson : " I cannot 
be heard by many but yourselves," he said, " therefore to you 
I will addi'ess a few words ;" and he delivered to them a short 
speech which he had prepared, grave and calm, even to cold- 
ness, its sole purport being to show that he had acted right, 
that contempt of the rights of the sovereign was the true cause 
of the people's misfortunes, that the people ought to have no 
share in the government, that upon this condition alone would 
the country regain peace and its liberties. While he was 
speaking, some one touched the axe ; he turned round hastily, 
saying, " Do not spoil the axe, it would hurt me more ;" and 
again, as he was about to conclude his address, some one else 
again approaching it : " Take care of the axe, take care !" he 
repeated, in an agitated tone. The most profound silence 
prevailed : he put a silk cap upon his head, and addressing the 
executioner, said : " Is my hair in the way ?" " I beg your 
majesty to put it under your cap," replied the man, bowing. 
The king with the help of the bishop, did so. " I have on my 
side a good cause and a merciful God !" he said to his venera- 
ble servant. Juxon : " Yes, sire, there is but one stage more : 
it is full of trouble and anguish, but it is a very short one ; 
and consider, it will carry you a great way j it will carry you 
from earth to heaven !" The king : " I go from a corruptible 
to an incorruptible crown, where I shall have no trouble to 
fear!" and, turning towards the executioner: "Is my hair 
right ?" He took off his cloak and George, and gave the 



ENGLISH REVOLrXION. 455 

George to Juxon, saying : " Remember."* He then took off 
his coat, put on his cloak again, and looking at the block, said 
to the executioner : " Place it so it may be firm." " It is firm, 
sir," The king : " I will say a short prayer, and when I hold 
out my hands, then . . . ." 

He stood in meditation, murmured a few words to himself, 
raised his eyes to heaven, knelt down, and laid his head upon 
the block ; the executioner touched his hair to put it still fur- 
ther under his cap ; the king thought he was going to strike. 
" Wait for the signal," he said. " I shall wait for it, sir, 
with the good pleasure of your majesty." In a minute the 
king held out his hands ; the executioner struck ; the head 
fell at a blow. " This is the head of a traitor ! " cried he, 
holding it up to the people ; a long deep groan arose from the 
multitude ; many persons rushed to the scaffold to dip their 
handkerchiefs in the king's blood. Two troops of horse ad- 
vancing in different directions, slow^ly dispersed the crowd. 
The scaffold being cleared, the body was taken away : it was 
already enclosed in the coffin when Cromwell desired to see 
it ; he looked at it attentively, and, raising the head, as if to 
make sure that it was indeed severed from the body j "This," 
he said, " was a well-constituted frame, and which promised 
a long life."'!' 

The coffin remained exposed for seven days at Whitehall ; 
an immense concourse pressed round the door, but few ob- 
tained leave to go in. On the 6th of February, by order of 
the commons, it was delivered to Herbert and Mildmay, with 
authority to bury it in Windsor castle, in St. George's chapel, 
where Henry the Eighth lies. The procession was decent, 
though without pomp ; six horses covered with black cloth 
drew the hearse ; four coaches followed, two of which, also 
hung with black cloth, conveyed the king's latest servants, 
those who had followed him to the Isle of Wight. Next day, 
the 8th, with the consent of the commons, the duke of Rich- 
mond, the Marquis of Hertford, the earls of Southampton and 
Lindsey, and bishop Juxon, arrived at Windsor, to assist at the 
funeral ; they had engraved on the coffin these words only : — 
CHARLES, REX, 
1648.:!: 

* It was never known to what the king alluded. f Noble, i., 118. 
{ Old Style. The English year, not being as yet regulated by the 



456 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH KE VOLUTION. 

As they were removing the body from the interior of the 
castle to the chapel, the weather, hitherto clear and serene, 
changed all at once : snow fell in abundance ; it entirely cov- 
ered the black velvet pall, and the king's servants, with a 
melancholy satisfaction, viewed in this sudden whiteness of 
their unhappy master's coffin, a symbol of his innocence. 
On the ai'rival of the procession at the place selected for se- 
pulture, bishop Juxon was preparing to officiate according to 
the rites of the English church, but Whychcott, the governor 
of the castle, would not permit this : " The liturgy decreed 
by parliament," he said, " is obligatory for the king as for all." 
They submitted ; no religious ceremony took place, and the 
coffin being lowered into the vault, all left the chapel, and the 
governor closed the door. The house of commons called for 
an account of the expense of the obsequies, and allowed five 
hundred pounds to pay for them. On the day of the king's 
death, before any express had left London, they published an 
ordinance, declaring whomsoever should pi'oclaim in his stead 
and as his successor " Charles Stuart his son, commonly call- 
ed prince of Wales, or any person whatsoever, a traitor."* 
On the 6th February, after a long discussion, and notwith- 
standing a division of twenty-nine to forty- four, the house of 
lords was solemnly abolished. f Finally, the next day, the 
7th, a decree was adopted, running thus : "It hath been found 
by experience, and this house doth declare, that the office of 
a king, in this nation, and to have the power thereof in any 
single person, is unnecessary, burthensome, and dangerous to 
the liberty, safety, and public interest of the people of this na- 
tion, and therefore ought to be abolished ;":[: and a new great 
seal was engraved, § bearing on one side a map of England 
and Ireland, with the arms of the two countries ; and on the 
reverse, a representation of the house of commons sitting, 
with this inscription, suggested by Henry Martyn : " The first 
year of liberty restored by the blessing of God, 1648." 

Gregorian Calendar, then began on the 24th of March ; January 30th, 
164S, the day of Charles's death, corresponds with our 9th of Februa- 
ry, 1649. 

* Pari. Hist, iii., 12S1. f ^b., 1284. J lb., 12S5. 

§ The order wag given as early as the 9th of February; Pari. Hist., 
lii., 1258. 



APPENDIX 



ILLUSTRATIONS AND HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. 



CONTENTS OF THE APPENDIX. 



I. Symptoms of the spirit of opposition and liberty in the reign of 

Elizabeth. 
II. Writing found in the hat of Felton, the assassin of the Duke of 

Buckingham. 

III. Character of the administration of Strafford in Ireland. 

IV. Fines imposed for the benefit of the crown, from 1629 to 1640. 
V. Instructions from the king to the marquis of Hamilton respect- 
ing the synod of Glasgow, in 1638. 

VI. Composition of the army raised by the parliament in 1642. 
VII. Employment of catholics in the royal army. 
VIII. Petition against peace from the common council to the house of 
commons, presented August 7, 1643. 
IX. Petition in favor of peace, from the women of London, pre- 
sented August 9, 1643. 
X. Declaration and justification of John Pym. 
XI. Letter from the king to prince Rupert, ordering him to relieve 

York. 
XII. The self-denying ordinance, adopted April 3, 1643. 

XIII. Extract from the minutes of the council held at Oxford, Dec. 5, 

1644. 

XIV. Cavalier songs against David Lesley and the Scottish troops re- 

called from England to the assistance of the Scottish pres- 
byterians, who had been defeated by Montrose. 
XV. Inedited documents and despatches relative to the extraordinary 
embassy sent to London, January, 1649, from the States- 
general of the United Provinces, to intercede with the 
parliament in favor of Charles the First. (Taken from the 
archives of the Hague.) 



ENGLISH KEVOLITTION. 459 



APPENDIX 



OF 



ELUCIDATIONS AND HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. 



Sytnptoms of the Spirit of Opposition and Liberty in the reign 
of Elizabeth. 

In the month of November, 1575, Mr. Peter Wentworth, a member of 
the house of commons, having made a speech in defence of the privi- 
leges of the house, and especially that of liberty of speech, was arrested 
by order of the queen, and underwent before a committee of the house, 
on which sat several privy councillors, the following examination, a 
curious record of the spirit of independence which began to manifest 
itself at this time, and of the approbation which the very men 
entrusted with the task of repressing it, felt themselves compelled to 
accord it. 

" Committee. Where is your late speech you promised to deliver 
in writing ? 

Wentworth. Here it is, and I deliver it upon two conditions : first, 
that you shall peruse it all, and if you can find any want of good will to 
my prince and state in any part thereof, let me answer all as if I had 
uttered all. The second is, tliat you shall deliver it unto the queen's 
majesty ; if her majesty, or you of her privy council, can find any want 
of love to her majesty or the state therein, also let me answer it. 

Committee. We will deal with no more than you uttered in the 
house. 

Wentworth. Your honors cannot refuse to deliver it to her majes- 
ty ; for I do send it to her majesty as my heart and mind, knowing it 
will do her majesty good ; it will hurt no one but myself. 

Committee. Seeing your desire is to have us deliver it to her ma- 
jesty, we will deliver it. 

Wentworth. I humbly require your honors to do so. 

[Then, the speech being read, they went on :] 

Committee. Here you have uttered certain rumors of the queen's 
majesty : where and when heard you them .' 



460 APPENDIX. 



Wentworth. If your honors ask me as councillors to her majesty, 
you shall pardon me — I will make you no answer. I will do no such 
injury to the place from whence I came, for I am now no private per- 
son, I am a public, and a councillor to the whole state in that place, 
where it is lawful for me to speak my mind freely ; and not for you, as 
councillors, to call me to account for anything that I do speak in the 
house ; and therefore if you ask me as councillors to her majesty, you 
shall pardon me, I will make no answer ; but if you ask me as commit- 
tees from the house, I will make you the best answer I can. 

Committee. We ask you as a committee from the house. 

Wentworth. I will then answer you ; and the willinger for that 
mine answer will be in some part so imperfect, as of necessity it must 
be. Your question consisteth of these two points ; where and of whom 
I heard these rumors. The place where I heard them was the parlia- 
ment house ; but of whom, I assure you, I cannot tell. 

Committee. This is no answer, to say you cannot tell of whom, 
neither will we take it for any. 

Wentworth. Truly your honors must needs take it for an answer, 
when I can make you no better. 

Committee. Belike you have heard some speeches, in the town, of 
her majesty's misliking of religion and succession ; you are loth to utter 
of whom, and did use speeches thereupon. 

Wentworth. I can assure your honors, I can show you that speech 
at my own house, written with my hand two or three years ago. So 
that you may thereby judge, that I did not speak it of anything that I 
heard since I came to town. 

Committee. You have answered that, but where heard you it, 
then ? 

Wentworth. If your honors do think I speak for excuse' sake, let 
this satisfy you : I protest before the living God, I cannot tell of whom 
I heard these rumors ; yet I do verily think that I heard them of a 
hundred or two in the house. 

C0MM1.TTEE. Then of so many you can name some ? 

Wentworth. No, surely, because it was so general a speech, I 
marked none ; neither do men mark speakers commonly when they be 
general ; and I assure you, if I could tell, I would not. For I will 
never utter anything told me, to the hurt of any man, when I am 
not enforced thereunto, as in this case I may choose. Yet I would 
deal plainly with you, for I would tell your honors so, and if your honors 
do not credit me, I will voluntarily take an oath, if you offer me a book, 
that I cannot tell of whom I heard those rumors. But if you offer me 
an oath of your authorities, I will refuse it ; because I will do nothing 
to infringe the liberties of the house. But what need I to use these 
speeches ? I will give you an instance, whereupon I heard these ru- 
mors, to your satisfying, even such a one as, if you will speak the truth, 
you shall confess you heard the same as well as I. 

Committee. In so doing, we will be satisfied : what is that . 

Wentworth. The last parliament [13th Eliz.], he that is now 
speaker [Robert Bell, Esq.], and who was also speaker in the first ses- 
sion of the present parliament [14th Eliz.], uttered a very good speech 
for the calling in of certain licenses granted to four courtiers to the 



APPENDIX. 461 



utter undoing of 6000 or 8000 of the queen's subjects. This speech 
was so disliked by some of the council, that he was sent for ; and so 
hardly dealt with, that he came into the house with such an amazed 
countenance, that it daunted all the house in such sort that for ten, 
twelve, or sixteen days, there was not one in the house that durst deal 
in any matter of importance. And in those simple matters that they 
dealt in, they spent more words and time in their preamble, requiring 
that they might not be mistaken, than they did in the matter they spake 
unto. This inconvenience grew unto the house by the council's hard 
handling of the same good member, whereon this rumor grew in the 
house : " Sirs, you may not speak against licenses, the queen's majesty 
will be angry, the privy council, too, will be angry ;" and this rumor I 
suppose there is not one of you here, but heard it as well as I. I be- 
seech your honors discharge your consciences herein as I do. 

Committee. We heard it, we confess, and you have satisfied us in 
this ; but how say you to the hard interpretation you made of the mes- 
sage that was sent into the house. [The words were recited.] We 
assure you we never heard a harder interpretation of a message. 

Weivtworth. I beseech your honors first, was there not such a mes- 
sage sent into the house ? 

Committee. We grant that there was. 

Wentworth. Then I trust you will bear me record that I made it 
not ; and I answer for that, so hard a message could not have too hard 
an interposition made by the wisest man in England. For can there, 
by any possible means, be sent a harder message to a council gathered 
together to sei've God, than to say : " You shall not seek to advance the 
glory of God !" I am of this opinion ; that there cannot be a more 
wicked message than it was. 

Committee. You may not speak against messages, for none sendeth 
them but the queen's majesty. 

Wentworth. If the message be against the glory of God, against 
the prince's safety, or against the liberty of this parliament house, 
whereby the state is maintained, I neither may nor will hold my peace. 
I cannot, in so doing, discharge my conscience, whosoever doth send it. 
And I say, that I heartily repent me, for that I have hitherto held my 
peace in these causes ; and I do promise you all, if God forsake me not, 
that I will never, during life, hold my tongue if any message is sent 
wherein God is dishonored, the prince reviled, or the liberties of the 
parliament impeached ; and every one of you here present ought to 
repent you of these faults, and to amend them. 

Committee. It is no new precedent to have the prince to send mes- 
sages. [There were two or three messages recited sent by two or three 
princes.] 

Wentworth. Sirs, I say you do very ill to allege precedents in this 
order. You ought to allege good precedents, to comfort and embolden 
men in good doings, and not evil precedents to discourage and terrify 
men to do evil. 

Committee. But what meant you to make so hard interpretation of 
messages ? 

Wentworth. Surely, I marvel what you mean by asking this ques- 
tion. Have I not said, so hard a message could not have too hard an 

39* 



462 



interpretation ? And have I not set down the reason that moved me in 
my speech — that is to say, that for the receiving and accepting that 
message, God has passed so great indignation upon us, that he put into 
the queen's heart to refuse good and wholesome laws for her own pre- 
servation, which caused many loving and faithful hearts for grief to 
burst out with sorrowful tears ; and moved all papists, traitors to God, 
to her majesty, and to every good Christian government, in their sleeves 
to laugh the whole parliament house to scoi-n. Have I not thus said, 
and do not your honors think it so ? 

Committee. Yes, truly. But how durst you say, that the queen 
had unkindly abused herself against the nobility and people .' 

Wentworth. I beseech your honors, tell me how far you can stretch 
these words, of her unkindly abusing and opposing herself against her 
majesty's nobility and people ? Can you apply them any further than 
I have applied them — that is to say, in that her majesty called the par- 
liament on purpose to prevent traitorous perils to her person, and for 
no other cause ; and in that her majesty did send unto us two bills, 
willing us to take our choice of that we liked best fof her majesty's 
safety, and thereof to make a law, promising her royal consent there- 
unto ; and did we not first choose the one, and her majesty refused it? 
Yet did not we, nevertheless, receive the other ? and agreeing to make 
a law thereof, did not her majesty in the end refuse all our travails ? 
And did not the lord keeper, in her majesty's presence, in the begin- 
ning of the parliament, show this to be the occasion that we were 
called together ? And did not her majesty, in the end of the parlia- 
ment, refuse all our travails .' Is not this known to all here present, 
and to all the parliament house also ? I beseech your honors discharge 
your consciences herein, and utter your knowledge simply as I do ; for, 
in truth, herein did her majesty abuse her nobility and subjects, and did 
oppose herself against them by the way of advice. 

Committee. Surely, we cannot deny it ; you say the truth. 

Wentworth. Then, I beseech your honors, show me if it were 
not a dangerous doing to her majesty in these two respects : first, in 
weakening, wounding, and discouraging the hearts of her majesty's 
loving and faithful subjects, thereby to make them the less able, or the 
more fearful and unwilling, to serve her majesty another time .' On 
the other side, was it not a raising up and encouraging the hearts of her 
majesty's hateful enemies to adventure any desperate enterprise to her 
majesty's peril and danger ? 

Committee. We cannot deny but that it was very dangerous to her 
majesty in these respects. 

Wentworth. Then, why do your honors ask, how I dai-e tell a 
truth, to give the queen warning to avoid her danger ? I answer you 
thus : I do thank the Lord my God that I never found fear in myself to 
give the queen's majesty warning to avoid her danger ; be you all afraid 
thereof, if you will, for I praise God I am not, and I hope never to live 
to see that day ; and yet I will assure your honors, that twenty times 
and more, when I walked in my grounds, revolving this speech, to 
prepare against this day, my own fearful conceit did say unto me, that 
this speech would carry me to the place whither I shall now go, and 
fear would have moved me to put it out ; when I weighed, whether in 



APPENDIX. 463 



good conscience, and the duty of a faithful subject, I might keep my- 
self out of prison and not warn my prince of walking in a dangerous 
course, my conscience said unto me, that I could not be a faithful sub- 
ject if I had more respect to avoid my own danger than my prince's 
danger. Therewithal I was made bold, and went forward, as your 
honors heard ; yet when I uttered those words in the house, that there 
was none without fault, no, not our noble queen, I paused, and beheld 
all your countenances, and saw plainly that those words did amaze you 
all ; then I was afraid with you for company, and fear bade me to put 
out those words that followed, for your countenances did assure me, 
that not one of you would stay me of my journey ; yet the considera- 
tion of a good conscience, and of a faithful subject, did make me bold 
to utter it in such sort as your honors heard. With this heai-t and 
mind I spake it ; and I praise God for it ; and if it were to do again, I 
would, with the same mind, speak it again. 

Committee. Yea, but you might have uttered it in better terms : 
why did you not so ? 

Wentworth. Would you have me to have done as you of her ma- 
jesty's council do, to utter a weighty matter in such terms as she should 
not have understood ? To have made a fault then, it would have done 
her majesty no good, and my interest was to do her good. 

CoMMTiTTEE. You havc answercd us. 

Wentworth. Then I praise God for it. 

And he bowed. 

Mr. Seckford. Mr. Wentworth will never acknowledge himself to 
make a fault, nor say that he is sorry for anything he doth speak. You 
shall heai" none of these things come out of his mouth. 

Wentworth. Mr. Seckford, I will never acknowledge that to be a 
fault to love the queen's majesty while I live ; neither will I be sorry 
for giving her majesty warning to avoid danger, while the breath is in 
my body. If you do think it a fault to love her majesty, or to be sorry 
that her majesty should have warning to avoid her danger, say so, for I 
cannot; speak for yourself, Mr. Seckford. — Pari. Hist., i., 794-7. 



IT. 

Paper foU7id in the hat of Felton, the murderer of the 
Duke of Buckingham. 

The original writing still exists ; and Mr. Lingard published it ver- 
batim in his History. It is as follows : — 

" That man is Cowardly base, and deserveth not the name of a gen- 
tleman or Souldier that is not willinge to sacrifice his life for the honor 
of his God, his King, and his Countrie. Lett noe man commend me 
for doeinge of "it, but rather discommend themselves as the cause of it ; 
for if God had not taken ovr harts for ovr sinnes, he wd not have gone 
so long vnpunished." 

" Jo. Felton." 
— Lingard's History of England, ix., 394. 



464 APPENDIX. 

III. 
Character of Lord Strafford's Administration in Ireland. 

The letter, from which the following extract is taken, addressed by 
Straftbrd to his intimate friend, sir Christopher Wandesford, master of 
the rolls in Ireland, gives an account of the manner in which he had 
answered to the king and council the charges which had been brought 
against him : — 

" I then craved admission to justify myself in some particulars 
wherein I had been very undeservedly and bloodily traduced. 

" So I related to them all that had passed betwixt myself, earl of St. 
Albans, Wilmot, Mountnorris, Piers Crosby, and the jury of Galway, 
that hereupon touching_^and rubbing in the course of my decree upon 
their particulars, themselves and friends have endeavored to possess the 
world I was a severe and an austere, hard conditioned man — rather, in- 
deed, a bashaw of Buda than the minister of a pious and Christian king. 
Howbeit, if I were not much mistaken in myself, it was quite the con- 
trary ; no man could show wherein I had expressed it in my nature, no 
friend I had would charge me with it in my private conversation, no 
creature had found it in the managing of my own private affairs, so as 
if I stood clear in all these respects, it was to be confessed by any equal 
mind, that it was not anything within, but the necessity of his majesty's 
service, which forced me into a seeming strictness outwardly. And that 
was the reason, indeed ; for where I found a Crown, a Church, and a 
people spoiled, I could not imagine to redeem them from under the 
pressure with gracious smiles and gentle looks ; it would cost warmer 
water than so. True it wjis, that where a dominion was once gotten 
and sealed, it might be stayed and kept where it was by soft and mode- 
rate counsels ; but where a sovereignty (be it spoken with reverence) 
was going down the hill, the nature of a man did so easily slide into the 
paths of an uncontrolled liberty, as it would not be brought back with- 
out strength, nor be forced up the hill again but by vigor and force. 
And true it was indeed, I knew no other rule to govern by, but by re- 
ward and punishment ; and I must profess, that where I found a person 
well and entirely set for the service of my master, I should lay my hand 
under his foot, and add to his respect and power all I might ; and that 
where I found the contrary, I should not dandle him in my arms, or 
soothe him in his untoward humor, but if he came in my reach, so far 
as honor and justice would warrant me, t must knock him soundly over 
the knuckles ; but no sooner he became a new man, apply himself as he 
ought to the government, but I also change my temper, and express 
myself to him, as to that other, by all the good offices I could do him. 
If this be sharpness, and this be severity, I desired to be better in- 
structed by his majesty and their lordships, for, in truth, it did not seem 
so to me ; however, if I were once told that his majesty liked not to be 
thus served, I would readily conform myself, and follow the bent and 
current of my own disposition, which is to be quiet, not to have debates 
and disputes with any. 

" Here his majesty interrupted me, and said, that was severity ; 
wished me to go on in that way, for if I served him otherwise, I should 
not serve him as he expected from me." — Strafford's Letters and De- 
spatches, ii., 20. 



APPENDIX. 465 



IV. 

Fines imposed for the profit of the Crown from 1629 to 1640. 

1. Richard Chambers, for having refused to pay custom duties 

not voted by parliament, fined ----- £2,000 

2. Hillyard, for having sold saltpetre .» 5,000 

3. Goodenough, for the same cause ----- 1,000 

4. Sir James Maleverer, for not having compounded with the 

king's commissioners for the title of knighthood - - 2,000 

5. The earl of Salisbury, for encroachments on the royal forests 20,000 

6. The earl of Westmoreland, idem. 19,000 

7. Lord Newport, idem. 3,000 

8. Sir Christopher Hatton, idem. 12,000 

9. Sir Lewis Watson, idem. 4,000 

10. Sir Anthony Cooper, for having changed arable into grass 

land 4,000 

11. Alexander Leighton, for a libel 10,000 

1 2. Henry Sherfield, for having broken some panes of stained 

glass in Salisbui-y Cathedral ----- 500 

13. John Overman, and several other soap-makers, for not hav- 

ing followed the king's orders in the fabrication and sale 

of soap, 13,000 

14. John Rea 2,000 

15. Peter Hern and several others, for having exported gold - 8,100 

16. Sir David Foulis and his son, for having spoken disrespect- 

fully of the northern court 5,500 

17. Prynne, for a libel 5,000 

18. Buckner, censor, for having allowed Prynne's book to be 

published --------- 50 

19. Michael Sparkes, printer, for having printed the said book 500 

20. Alison and Robins, for having spoken ill of archbishop 

Laud 2,000 

21. Bastwick, for a libel 1,000 

22. Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, for libels - - - 15,000 

23. Prynne's servant, for the same cause - - - - 1,000 

24. Bowyer, for having spoken against Laud . - - 3,000 

25. Yeomans and Wright, for dying silks improperly - - 5,000 

26. Savage, Weldon, and Burton, for having spoken ill of lord 

Falkland, lord-lieutenant of Ireland - - - - 3,500 

27. Grenville, for speaking ill of the earl of Suffolk - - 4,000 

28. Favers, idem. 1,000 

29. Morley, for having abused and struck sir George Theobald, 

within the precinct of the court - . . . io,000 

30. Williams, bishop of Lincoln, for having spoken ill of Laud 10,000 

31. Bernard, for having preached against the use of the crucifix 1,000 

32. Smart, for having preached against the ecclesiastical inno- 

vations of Dr. Cozens, &c. 500 



£ 173,650 
This list is far from being complete ; you may find a multitude of 
other causes, amounting to a considerable sum, in Rushworth, vols. i. 
and ii. 



4S6 APPENDIX. 



V. 

Instructions sent by the King to the Marquis of Hamilton, for the 
holding of the Synod at Glasgow, in 1638. 

" And as for this general assembly, though I can expect no good from 
it, yet I hope you may hinder much of the ill ; first, by putting divisions 
among them, concerning the legality of their elections, then by protes- 
tations against their tumultuous proceedings." 
And elsewhere : 

" As for the opinions of the clergy to prorogue this assembly, I ut- 
terly dislike them, for I should more hurt my reputation by not keeping 
it, than their mad acts can prejudice my service ; vpherefore I command 
you hold your day ; but, as you write, if you can break them by proving 
nullities in their proceedings, nothing better." — Burnet, Memoirs of the 
Hamiltons (1677), 82, 88. 



VI. 

Composition of the Army raised by Parliament in 1642.* 

General-in-chief: Robert Devereux, eaii of Essex. 
Major-general (or, as that office was then called, Serjeant major- 
general), sir John Merrick. 

General of artillery : John Mordaunt, earl of Peterborough. f 

Colonels of Infantry Regiments. 



The earl of Essex. 
The earl of Peterborough. 
Henry Gray, earl of Stamford. 
William Fiennes, viscount Say. 
Edward Montague, viscount Man- 

deville.J 
John Carey, viscount Rochford.§ 
Oliver St. John, viscount St. John. 
Robert Greville, lord Brook. 
John Roberts, lord Roberts. 
Philip Wharton, lord Wharton. 



John Hampden. 
Denzil Holies. 
Sir John Merrick. 
Sir Henry Cholmondley. 
Sir William Constable. 
Sir William Fairfax. || 
Charles Essex. 
Thomas Grantham. 
Thomas Ballard. 
William Bampfield. 



* From a pamphlet published m London in 1642, and entitled " The 
List of the Army raised under the command of his excellency Robert 
earl of Essex." 

^ On the death of the earl of Peterborough, sir John Merrick became 
general of the artillery, and Philip Skippon was appointed major- 
general. 

X Lord Manchester, known also by the name of baron Kimbolton. 

§ Also called lord Hunsdon. 

II A cousin of the celebrated sir Thomas Fairfax. 



APPENDIX. 



467 



Colonels of Troops of Horse."* 



The earl of Essex. 

The earl of Bedford. 

The earl of Peterborough, 

The earl of Stamford. 

Viscount Say. 

Viscount St. John. 

Basil Fielding, viscount Fielding, f 

Lord Brook. 

Lord Wharton. 

William Willoughby, lord Wil- 

loughby of Parham. 
Ferdinand Hastings, lord Hast- 



ings, 
Thomas Grey, lord 

Groby. 
Sir William Balfour. 
Sir William Waller. 
Sir Arthur Haslerig. 
Sir Walter Earl. 
Sir Faithful Fortescue. 
Nathaniel Fiennes. 
Francis Fiennes. 
John Fiennes. 
Oliver Cromwell. 
Valentine Wharton. 
Henry Ireton. 
Arthur Goodwin. 
John Dalbier. 
Adrian Scrope. 
Thomas Hatcher. 
John Hotham. 
Edward Berry. 
Sir Robert Pye. 
Sir William Wray. 
Sit John Saunders. 
John Alured. 
Edwin Sandys 
John Hammond. 
Thomas Hammond 



Grey of 



Alexander Pym. 
Anthony Mildmay. 
Henry Mildmay. 
James Temple. 
Thomas Temple. 
Arthur Evelyn. 
Robert Vivers. 
Hercules Langrish. 
William Pretty. 
William Pretty. 
James Sheffield. 
John Gunter. 
Robert Burrel. 
Francis Dowit. 
John Bird. 
Matthew Drapper. 
Matthew Dimock. 
Horace Carey. 
John Neal, 
Edward Ayscough. 
George Thompson. 
Francis Thompson. 
Edward Keightly. 
Alexander Douglas 
Thomas Lidcot'. 
John Fleming. 
Richard Grenville 
Thomas Terril. 
John Hale. 
William Balfour. 
George Austin. 
Edward Wingate. 
Edward Baynton. 
Charles Chichester, 
Walter Long. 
Edmund West. 
William Anselm. 
Robert Kirle. 
Simon Rudgeley. 



* In the writings of the period they are often called captains, 
t Sometimes also called lord Newnham ; he was the son of the earl 
of Denbigh, and on his death (April, 1643) assumed the title. 



468 APPENDIX. 



VII. 
Employment of Catholics in the ITing's Armies. 

So early as Sept. 23, 1642 — that is to say, at the very moment of the 
breaking out of the civil v^^ar, and before the battle of Edgehill , the 
king wrote in the following terms to the earl of Newcastle : — 

" Newcastle, this is to tell you that this rebellion has grown to that 
height, that I must not locke what opinion men ar who, at this tyme, 
ar willing to serve me. Therefore, I do not only permit but command 
you, to make use of all my loving subjects, without exEimining their 
conscienses (more than their loyalty to me), as you shall finde most to 
conduce to the uphoulding of my just regal rights." — Brodie, Hist, of 
the British Empire, iii., 489, note. 



VIII. 

Petition against Peace presented to the House of Commons, August 
7, 1643, /ro»i the Common Council of London. 

" Showeth that your petitioners, having heard that such propositions 
and offers have been lately sent from the house of peers to this honor- 
able house, which (as we greatly fear), if yielded unto, would be des- 
tructive to our, religion, laws, and liberties; and finding already, by 
experience, that the spirits of all the well-affected party in the city and 
counties adjacent, that are willing to assist the parliament, both in 
person and purse, are much dejected thereat ; and the brotherly assist- 
ance from Scotland, as well as the raising and maintaining of forces 
ourselves, thereby likely to be retarded (all which the petitioners refer 
to your serious consideration) ; and considering our present sad condi- 
tion lies upon us in a special manner, through the incensed patience 
of the Almighty, by delay and want of execution of justice upon traitors 
and delinquents, and having an opportunity yet to speak, our desires are : 

" That you would be pleased so to persist in your former resolutions, 
whereupon the people have so much depended, and wherein you have 
so deeply engaged yourselves (though you should perish in the work), 
that justice may be done upon offenders and delinquents. And that 
since we are as willing as ever to expose what we are and have for the 
crowning of so good a cause, you will be pleased, by speedy passing the 
ordinance hereto annext, or one to this effect, to put us into a probable 
way for our and your defence, wherein your petitioners will, by the 
blessing of God, never be wanting." 

There was annexed to this petition the draft of an ordinance for 
empowering a committee to enlist men and receive subscriptions from 
such as should offer them. — Rush worth, ii., 3, 356. 



APPENDIX. 469 



IX. 

Petition in favor of Peace presented to the House of Commons, 
August 9, 1643, by the Women of London. 

" Showeth that your poor petitioners (though of the weaker sex) do 
too sensibly perceive the ensuing desolation of this kingdom, unless by 
some timely means your honors provide for the speedy recovery hereof. 
Your honors are the physicians that can, by God's special and miracu- 
lous blessing (which we humbly implore), restore this languishing 
nation, and our bleeding sister, the kingdom of Ireland, which hath 
now almost breathed her last gasp. 

" We need not dictate to your eagle-eyed judgment the way ; our 
only desire is, that God's glory in the true reformed protestant religion 
maybe preserved, the just prerogatives and privileges of king and par- 
liament maintained, the true liberties and properties of the subjects, 
according to the known laws of the land, restored, and all honorable 
ways and means for a speedy peace endeavored. 

" May it therefore please your honors, that some speedy course may 
be taken for the settlement of the true reformed protestant religion, for 
the glory of God and the renovation of trade, for the benefit of the sub- 
jects, they being the soul and body of the kingdom. 

" And your petitioners, with many millions of atHicted souls, groan- 
ing under the burden of these times of distress, shall ever pray." 



X. 

A Declaration and Vindication of John Pym, Esq. 

" It is not unknown to all the world (especially to all the inhabitants 
in and about London) with what desperate and fame-wounding asper- 
sions my reputation, and the integrity of my intentions to God, my 
king, and my country, hath been invaded by the malice and fury of 
malignants, and ill-affected persons to the good of the commonwealth. 
Some charging me with being a promoter and patronizer of all the 
innovations which have been obtruded upon the ecclesiastical govern- 
ment of the church of England. Others, of more spiteful and exorbi- 
tant spirits, alleging that I have been the man, who have begot and 
fostered all the so lamented distractions, which are now rife in the 
kingdom ; and though such calumnies are ever more harmful to the 
authors, than to those whom they strive to wound with them, when 
they arrive only to the censure of judicious persons, who can distin- 
guish forms, and see the difference betwixt truth and falsehood : yet, 
because the scandals inflicted upon my innocence have been obvious to 
people of all conditions, many of which may entertain a belief of those 
reproachful reports, though, in my own soul, I am far above those 
ignominies, and so was once resolved to have waved them, as unworthy 
of my notice : yet, at last, for the assertion of my integrity, I concluded 
40 



470 APPENDIX. 



to declare myself in this matter, that all the world, but such as will not 
be convinced, either by reason or truth, may bear testimony of my 
innocency. To pass by, therefore, the earl of Strafford's business, in 
which some have been so impudent as to charge me of too much par- 
tiality and malice ; I shall declare myself fully concerning the rest of 
their aspersions ; namely, that I have promoted and fomented the 
differences now abounding in the English church. 

" How unlikely this is and improbable, shall to every indifferent man 
be quickly rendered perspicuous : For that I am, and ever was, and so 
will die, a faithful son of the protestant religion, without leaving the 
least relation in my belief to those great errors of Anabaptism, Brown- 
ism, and the like, every man that hath any acquaintance with my con- 
versation, can bear me righteous witness. These being but aspersions 
cast upon me by some of the discontented clergy, and their factors and 
abettors, because they might perhaps conceive that I had been a main 
instrument in extenuating the haughty power and ambitious pride of the 
bishops and prelates. As I only delivered my opinions as a member 
of the house of commons, that attempt or action of mine had been 
justifiable, both to God and a good conscience ; and had no way con- 
cluded me guilty of a revolt from the orthodox doctrine of the church 
of England, because I sought a reformation of some gross abuses crept 
into the government by the cunning and perverseness of the bishops 
and their substitutes ; for was it not high time to seek to regulate their 
power, when, instead of looking to the cure of men's souls (which is 
their genuine office), they inflicted punishment on men's bodies, banish- 
ing them to remote and desolate places ; after stigmatizing their faces, 
only for the testimony of a good conscience, when, not contented with 
those insufferable insolences, they sought to bring in unheard of canons 
into the church, Arminian or papistical ceremonies (whether you please 
to term them, there is not much difference), imposing burdens upon 
men's consciences, which they were not able to bear, and introducing 
the old abolished superstition of bowing to the altar ; and if it savored 
either of Brownism or Anabaptism, to endeavor to suppress the growth 
of those Romish errors, I appeal to any equal minded protestant, either 
for my judge or witness ; nay, had the attempts of the bishops desisted 
here, tolerable they had been, and their power not so much questioned, 
as since it hath ; for when they saw the honorable the high court of 
parliament began to look into their enormities and abuses, beholding 
how they wrested religion like a waxen nose, to the furtherance of their 
ambitious purposes, then Troy was taken in, then they began to despair 
of holding any longer their usurped authority ; and therefore, as much 
as in them lay, both by public declarations and private councils, they 
labored to foment the civil differences between his Majesty and his 
parliament, abetting the proceedings of the malignants with large sup- 
plies of men and money, and stirring up the people to tumults by their 
seditious sermons. Surely, then, no man can account me an ill son of 
the commonwealth, if I deliver my opinion, and pass my vote freely 
for their abolishment ; which may by the same equity be put in practice 
by this parliament ; as the dissolution of monasteries and their lazy 
inhabitants, monks and friars, was in Henry the Eighth's time ; for 
without dispute, they carried as much reputation in the kingdom then, 



APPENDIX. 471 



as bishops have done in it since ; and yet a parliament then had power 
to put them down ; why, then, should not a parliament have the power 
to do the like to these, every way guilty of as many offences against the 
state as the former ? For my own part, I attest God Almighty, the 
knower of all hearts, that neither envy, nor any private grudge to all or 
any of the bishops, hath made me averse to their function, but merely 
my zeal to religion and God's cause, which I perceived to be trampled 
under foot by the too extended authority of the prelates ; who accord- 
ing to the purity of their institution, should have been men of upright 
hearts, and humble minds, shearing their flocks, and not flaying them, 
when it is evident they were the quite contrary. 

" And whereas some will allege, it is no good argument to dissolve 
the function of bishops, because some bishops are vicious : to that 
answer, since the vice of these bishops was derivative from the author- 
ity of their function, it is very fitting the function, which is the cause 
thereof, be corrected, and its authority divested of its borrowed feathers ; 
otherwise, it is impossible but the same power which made these pre- 
sent bishops (should the episcopal and prelatical dignity continue in its 
ancient height and vigor) so proud and arrogant, would infuse the same 
vices into their successors. 

" But this is but a molehill to that mountain of scandalous reports 
that have been inflicted on my integrity to his sacred majesty ; some 
boldly averring me for the author of the present distraction between 
his majesty and his parliament, when I take God, and all that know my 
proceedings, to be my vouchers, that I neither directly nor indirectly 
ever had a thought tending to the least disobedience or disloyalty to his 
majesty, whom I acknowledge my lawful king and sovereign, and would 
expend my blood as soon in his service as any subject he hath. 'T is 
true, when I perceived my life aimed at, and heard myself proscribed 
a traitor, merely for my entireness of heart to the service of my country, 
was informed that I, with some other honorable and worthy members 
of parliament, were against the privileges thereof demanded, even in 
the parliament house, by his majesty, attended by a multitude of men 
at arms and malignants, who, I verily believe, had for some ill ends of 
their own persuaded his majesty to that excess of rigor against us ; 
when, for my own part (my conscience is to me a thousand witnesses 
in that behalf), I never harbored a thought which tended to any dis- 
service to his majesty, nor ever had an intention prejudicial to the 
state ; when, I say, notwithstanding my own innocence, I saw myself 
in such apparent danger, no man will think me blameworthy in that I 
took care of my own safety, and fled for refuge to the protection of the 
parliament, which, making my case their own, not only purged me and 
the rest of the guilt of high treason, but also secured our lives from the 
storm that was ready to burst out upon us. 

" And if this hath been the occasion that hath withdrawn his majesty 
from the parliament, surely the fault can in no way be imputed to me, 
or any proceeding of mine ; which never went further, either since his 
majesty's departure or before, than so far as they were warranted by 
the known laws of the land and authorized by the indisputable and un- 
deniable power of the parliament ; and so long as I am secure in my 
own conscience that this is truth, I account myself above all their 



472 APPENDIX. 



calumnies and falsehoods, which shall return upon themselves, and not 
wound my reputation in good and impartial men's opinions. 

" But in that devilish conspiracy of Catiline, against the state and 
senate of Rome, none among the senators was so obnoxious to the envy 
of the conspirators, or liable to their traducements, as that orator and 
patriot of his country, Cicero, because by his council and zeal to the 
commonwealth, their plot for the ruin thereof was discovered and pre- 
vented ; though I will not be so arrogant to parallel myself with that 
worthy, yet my case (if we may compare lesser things with great) has 
to his a very near resemblance : the cause that I am so much ma- 
ligned and reproached by ill-affected persons, being because I have been 
forward in advancing the affairs of the kingdom, and have been taken 
notice of for that forwardness, they, out of their malice, converting that 
to a vice which, without boast be it spoken, I esteem as my principal 
virtue, my care to the public utility. And since it is for that cause 
that I suffer these scandals, I shall endure them with patience, hoping 
that God in his great mercy will at last reconcile his majesty to his 
high court of parliament ; and then I doubt not to give his royal self 
(though he be much incensed against me) a sufficient account of my 
integrity. In the interim, I hope the world will believe that I am not 
the first innocent man that hath been injured, and so will suspend their 
further censures of me." — Rushworth, ii., 3, 376. 



XL 

Letter from the King to Prince Rupert, ordering him to go and 
relieve York. 

Ticknell (Tickenhall), 14 June, 1644. 
" Nephew, 

" First I must congratulate with you for your good successes, assur- 
ing you that the things themselves are no more welcome to me than 
that you are the means. I know the importance of supplying you with 
powder, for which I have taken all possible ways, having sent both to 
Ireland and Bristol. As from Oxford, this bearer is well satisfied that 
it is impossible to have at present, but if he tell you that I may spare 
them from hence, I leave you to judge, having but thirty-six left ; but 
what I can get from Bristol (of which there is not much certainty, it 
being threatened to be besieged) you shall have. 

" But now I must give you the true state of my affairs, which if their 
condition be such as enforces me to give you more peremptory com- 
mands than I would v/illingly do, you must not take it ill. If York be 
lost, I shall esteem my crown little less, unless supported by your sud- 
den march to me, and a miraculous conquest in the South, before the 
effects of the northern power can be found here : but if York be re- 
lieved, and you beat the rebels' armies of both kingdoms which are 
before it, then, but otherwise not, I may possibly make a shift (upon 
the defensive) to spin out time, until you come to assist me. Where* 



APPENDIX. 473 



fore, I command and conjure you, by the duty and affection which I 
know you bear me, that (all new entei-prises laid aside) you immedi- 
ately march (according to your first intention) with all your force to 
the relief of York ; but if that be either lost, or have freed themselves 
from the besiegers, or that for want of powder, you cannot undertake 
that work, that you immediately march with your whole strength to 
Worcester, to assist me and my army, without which, or your having 
relieved York, by beating the Scots, all the successes you can afterwards 
have, most infallibly will be useless unto me ; you may believe that 
nothing but an extreme necessity could make me write thus unto you, 
wherefore, in this case, I can no ways doubt of your punctual compli- 
ance with 

Your loving uncle and most faithful friend, 

" Charles R." 
" I command this bearer to speak to you concerning Vavasour." — 
Evelyn, Mem., ii.. Append. 87. 



XII. 

The Self-denying Ordinance, adopted by the House of Commons, 
3d April, 164.5. 

" Be it ordained by the lords and commons assembled in parliament, 
that all and every of the members of either house of parliament shall 
be and by the authority of this ordinance are discharged at the end of 
forty days after the passing of this ordinance, of and from all and every 
office or command, military or civil, granted or conferred by both or 
either of the said houses of this present parliament, or by any authority 
derived from both or either of them, since the 20th November, 1640. 
And be it further ordained, that all governors and commanders of any 
island, town, castle, or fort, and all other colonels and officers inferior 
to colonels in the several armies, not being members of either of the 
said houses of parliament, shall, according to their respective commis- 
sions, continue in their several places and command wherein they were 
employed and entrusted, the 20th March, 1644, as if this ordinance had 
not been made. And that the vice-admiral, rear-admiral, and all other 
captains and other inferior officers in the fleet, shall, according to their 
several and respective commissions, continue in their several places 
and commands, wherein they were employed and entrusted, the said 
20th March, 1644, as if this ordinance had not been made. Provided 
always, and it is further ordained and declared, that during this war 
the benefit of all offices, being neither military nor judicial, hereafter 
to be granted, or any way to be appointed to any person or persons, by 
both or either house of parliament, or by authority derived from thence, 
shall go and enure to such public uses as both houses of parliament 
shall appoint ; and the grantees and persons executing all such offices 
shall be accountable to the parliament for all the profits and perqui- 
sites thereof, and shall have no profit out of any such office, other than 
a competent salary for the execution of the same, in such manner as 
40* 



474 APPENDIX. 



both houses of parliament shall order and ordain. Provided, that this 
ordinance shall not extend to take away the power and authority of any 
lieutenancy or deputy lieutenancy in the several counties, cities, or 
places, or of any custos-rotulorum, or of any commissioner for justice 
of peace, or sewers, or any commission of Oyer and Terminer, or gaol 
delivery. Provided always, and it is hereby declared, that those mem- 
bers of either house who had offices by grant from his majesty before 
this parliament, and were by his majesty displaced sitting this parlia- 
ment, and have since by authority of both houses been restored, shall 
not by this ordinance be discharged from their said offices or profits 
thereof, but shall enjoy the same ; anything in this ordinance to the 
contrai-y thereof notwithstanding." — Pari. Hist., iii., 355 



XIII. 

Extract from the Minutes of the Council held at Oxford, Dec. 5, 

1644. 

" PRESENT : 

The King's Most Excellent Majesty, 



Prince Rupert, 

Prince Maurice, 

Lord Keeper, 

Lord Treasurer, 

Lord Duke of Richmond, 

Lord Marquis of Hertford, 

Lord Great Chamberlain, 

Earl of Southampton, 

Lord Chamberlain, 



Earl of Berkshire, 

Earl of Sussex, 

Earl of Chichester, 

Lord Digby, 

Lord Seymour, 

Lord Colepepper, 

Mr. Secretary Nicholas, 

Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer. 



" A letter was read written by the earl of Essex to his highness 
prince Rupert, general of his majesty's armies, in these words : — 

' Sir, 

' There being a message sent from his majesty by the committees of 
both kingdoms, that were lately at Oxford, concerning a safe conduct 
for the duke of Richmond and earl of Southampton, without any direc- 
tion, I am commanded, by both houses of parliament, to give your 
highness notice, that if the king be pleased to desire a safe conduct for 
the duke of Richmond and the earl of Southampton, with their attend- 
ants, from the lords and commons assembled in the parliament of Eng- 
land, at Westminster, to bring to the lords and commons assembled in 
the parliament of England, and the commissioners of the kingdom of 
Scotland, now at London, an answer to the propositions presented to 
his majesty for a safe and well-grounded peace, it shall be granted 
This is all I have at present to trouble your highness, being 

' Your highness's humble servant, 

' Dec. 3, 1644.' ' Essex. 



APPENDIX. 475 



" This letter and the expressions therein being fully considei-ed and 
debated, it was by the whole council unanimously resolved, that his 
majesty's desire of a safe conduct, in the terms expressed in that letter, 
would not be any acknowledgment or concession of the members of 
the two houses sitting at Westminster to be a parliament, nor any ways 
prejudice his majesty's cause. 

" Whereupon his majesty declaring openly at the board, that since 
such was their lordships' opinion, that he did therefore and eo animo 
consent thereto, and accordingly his majesty desired his highness, 
prince Rupert, as his majesty's general, to return this answer : — 

' My Lord, 

'I am commanded by his majesty to desire of your lordship a safe 
conduct for the duke of Richmond and the earl of Southampton, with 
their attendants, coaches and horses, and other accommodations for 
their journey in their coming to London, during their stay, and in their 
return, when they shall think fit, from the lords and commons assem- 
bled in the parliament of England, in Westminster, to bring to the 
lords and commons assembled in the parliament of England, and the 
commissioners of the parliament of Scotland, now at London, an answer 
to the propositions presented to his majesty for a safe and well-grounded 
peace. Resting, 

' Your lordship's servant, 

' Oxon, 5 Dec, 1644.' ' ' Rupert. 

" Which answer was accordingly sent to London by a trumpeter. 

" Edw. Nicholas." 

{The following is in the handwriting of sir Edward JVicholas.) 

" Memorandum : — That the king and myself of all the council board 
were the only persons that concurred not in opinion that it was fit to , 
call those sitting at Westminster a parliament. Prince Rupert, though 
he was present, did not vote, because he was to execute what should 
be resolved on by this council ; but, by the order and practice of the 
council board, if the major part agree to any act or order, all the coun- 
cillors that are present at the debate, albeit their dissent, are involved, 
and are to be named as if they consented. 

Evelyn, Mem., ii., Appendix, 90. " E. N." 



XIV. 
March of David Lesley. 



I. 

March, march, pinks of election ! 
Why the devil don't you march onward in order ; 

March, march, dogs of redemption : 
Ere the blue bonnets come over the border. 



476 APPENDIX. 



You shall preach , you shall pray, 

You shall teach night and day ; 
You shall prevail o'er the kirk gone a whoring ; 

Dance in blood to the knees, 

Blood of God's enemies ! 
The daughters of Scotland shall sing you to snoring. 

II. 

March, march, dregs of all wickedness ! 
Glory that lower you can't be debased ; 

March, march, dunghills of blessedness ! 
March and rejoice for you shall be raised 

Not to board, not to rope, 

But to faith and to hope ; 
Scotland's athirst for the truth to be taught her ; 

Her chosen virgin race. 

How they will grow in grace. 
Round as a neep, like calves for the slaughter ! 

III. 

March, march, scourges of heresy ! 
Down with the kirk and its whilieballeery ! 

March, march ! down with supremacy 
And the kist fu' o' whistles, that maks sic a cleary ; 

Fife men and pipers braw, 

Merry deils, take them a', 
Gown, lace and livery, lickpot and ladle ; 

Jockey shall wear the hood, 

Jenny the sark of God, 
For codpiece and petticoat, dishclout and daidle. 

IV. 

March, march, blest ragamuffins ! 
Sing, as ye go, the hymns of rejoicing ! 

March, march, justified ruffians ! 
Chosen of heaven ! to glory you' re rising. 

Ragged and treacherous. 

Lousy and lecherous, 
Objects of misery, scorning and laughter ; 

Never, happy race ! 

Magnified so was grace ; 
Host of the righteous ! rush to the slaughter ! 

Hogg, Jacobite Relics of Scotland, i., 5, 163. 



XV. 

I GIVE here the unpublished documents and dispatches relative to the 
intervention of the States General of the United Provinces in favor of 



APPENDIX. 477 



Charles I. The first of these is in French, the others are in Dutch ; 
I have had them completely and literally translated from certified 
copies of the originals, which M. de Jouge, keeper of the records of 
the Netherlands, had transcribed, and sent to me from the Hague : 

" I. A Summary of what his Royal Highness the .Pri?tce of Wales 
caused to be represented on his part and in his presence to their 
High Mightinesses the States General of the United Provinces 
of the JVetherlands, by the resident of the King of Great Bri- 
tain, Sfc, Jan. 23, 1649. 

" His royal highness the prince of Wales has for a long time had the 
intention of requesting a personal audience, to acknowledge the honors 
and great courtesies he has received from their lordships since his 
arrival in these countries ; and now he desires it with peculiar earnest- 
ness, on an occasion of the greatest importance in the world to his royal 
highness, and in which he presumes their lordships will fully sympa- 
thize. Their lordships cannot be ignorant of the great danger in 
which the life of the king, his father, now stands ; how, after a per- 
sonal treaty with his two houses of parliament, there was such pro- 
gress made towards peace by the concessions of his majesty that the 
said houses declared themselves resolved to proceed on them to the 
establishment of the peace of the kingdom ; which would indubitably 
have taken place had not the army seized his majesty's person, and 
committed to prison several members of parliament who had shown 
themselves the most disposed for the said treaty of peace. 

" Such is, then, the state of that truly miserable kingdom ; the king 
so closely confined that a gentleman, sent expressly by his royal high- 
ness only to see his majesty, was not admitted to his presence ; the 
parliament so broken up and dispersed that there only remain there 
about fifty out of more than five hundred members in the house of 
commons ; and the house of lords, who have unanimously refused their 
concurrence in these violent proceedings, practically annihilated, by 
a declaration of these few commons that all sovereign power in that 
kingdom belongs to them without king or lords. So that the members 
of parliament do not meet, except those who agree and submit to the 
orders of a court-martial, constituted to govern the kingdom; having 
to this end published a remonstrance containing the plan of a new go- 
vernment, which they desire to establish to the ruin of the parliament 
as well as of the king, subverting the fabric and constitution of the 
kingdom, and of all its laws, and exposing the protestant religion to 
the invasion of more heresies and schisms than ever in any century in- 
fested the Christian church. 

" Not contented with this confusion, they have passed a resolution 
and appointed commissionei's for a trial against the person of his ma- 
jesty, apparently to depose him and take away his life ; which his 
royal highness cannot mention without horror, and which he is cer- 
tain their lordships cannot hear without equal detestation. 

" What influence these unprecedented proceedings may have on the 
interest and repose of all kings, princes, and states, and how much the 
extravagant power which these people have usurped may affect the 



478 APPENDIX. 



tranquillity of the neighboring countries, and how far the reformed 
religion naay suffer by these scandalous acts of those who profess it, it 
is needless for his royal highness to urge their lordships to consider ; 
but he contents himself with having given this sad recital of the con- 
dition and misery in which the king and the crown of England are at 
present ; convinced that their lordships will act thereupon according 
to the esteem and respect they have ever shown towards so good a 
friend and ally. His royal highness therefore promises himself, from 
the friendship and wisdom of their lordships, as soon as possible, such 
assistance from their counsels and otherwise, as the present extreme 
necessity of the king his father and of his royal highness require, who 
by this will ever be really and for ever feel obliged to contribute all in 
their power to the support and advancement of the interest, grandeur, 
and felicity of their lordships." 

After these representations of the prince of Wales, the States re- 
solved to send to London, as extraordinary ambassadors. Messieurs 
Albert Joachim and Adrien de Pauw, v/ith the following instruc- 
tions : — 

" II. Instructions for Messieurs the Ambassadors of their High 
Mightinesses sent to London in the year 1649. 

" The ambassadors will represent to the parliament of England, that 
the consequences of the king's imprisonment will turn to the advantage 
or disadvantage of the kingdom of England, according to the modera- 
tion or severity that shall henceforth be shown towards his person ; for 
all neutrals are of opinion that the misfortune in which he is at pre- 
sent, has come upon him because he v^^as of a contrary opinion to that 
which has prevailed, as to the means to be employed to remedy the 
evils which exist in the kidgdom of Great Britain. As it is yet time 
to find remedies for these evils, the parliament is requested not to tole- 
rate that all sorts of pretexts should be seized upon to aggravate the 
grievances already charged upon the prisoner, and thus render him 
more unhappy than he is at present. Supposing that the party who 
has been defeated had gained the day, it is possible he might have 
judged with rigor the conduct of his adversaries, and I'efused them all 
means of defence ; but the States-general are persuaded that the good 
faith of all those who shall hear the propositions of MM. the Ambas- 
sadors, will make them answer within themselves that this would not 
have been equitable, and that they will approve the axiom : Politicum 
in civilibus dissensionibus, quamvis scepe per eas status Icsdatur, non 
tamen in exitium status contenditiir, proinde qui in alterutras partes 
descendunt hostium vice non habendi. 

" MM. the States-general know that your excellencies have appoint- 
ed commissioners-exti-aordinary to examine the king's situation ; they 
rely as much in the choice of your excellencies as in the sincerity and 
good faith with which the said commissioners will give, in the case in 
question, a judgment which may be submitted to the examination of 
the whole world, and be one day approved by the supreme Judge to 
whom they will be responsible. AH well-disposed persons expect, 
that in an affair of such importance, a wise and Christian course will 
be pursued. 



APPENDIX. 479 



" The experience of all times has shown, that distrust easily intro- 
duces itself into governments ; that in those which are composed of 
several bodies it is usually a powerful incitement ; that, in short, there 
is neither shame nor dishonor to be feared, when the safety of the 
state is concerned, which renders all fears legitimate and commenda- 
ble. Yet nothing can be more lamentable than to give way to extrava- 
gant suspicions, which interpret everything in an ill sense. 

" If your excellencies have thought that some calamity threatened 
the kingdom of England, in preventing it you have attained your ob- 
ject. Every one knows that it happens to the wisest of those who go- 
vern the commonwealth, to mix up with public affairs somewhat of 
their private affections ; and that never to fail in the management of great 
concerns, is a perfection above human nature, and the failing in which 
may well be excused. 

" This is what the States-general beg your excellencies to take into 
consideration, persuaded that you will do it with the greatest wisdom. 
Notwithstanding the distrust your excellencies have conceived respect- 
ing so great a personage, you should take into account so long an im- 
prisonment (which, in itself, is already, according to the common law, 
a great punishment), and the great and notable services rendered to 
the kingdom of England by him and his predecessors, kings and queens. 
Your excellencies will have compassion upon him, and remember : Ut 
eximatur periculo qui est inter vos celebri fama ne ipsis opprobrio 
niulti ?7iagis ac magis alienentur. 

" It is of great importance to the welfare of the kingdom of England, 
that your excellencies should proceed accordingly, and follow the 
counsel of that Roman who advised, the better to assure the measures 
of Pompey's consulship, not to annul anything that had been done under 
preceding governments, but only to be prudent for the time to come. 
One may v/ith reason apply to the present circumstances, that excel- 
lent precaution which one took to secure his own statue, by preventing 
from being overthrown that of his enemy, whom he had completely 
subdued. It is thus your excellencies are requested to act in an affair 
of such high importance, which may be the source of so many troubles, 
and to show your goodness towards this great personage, in preserving 
him from shame and ignominy ; for it is not sparing men to allow them 
to be dishonored. The parliament is, then, entreated to restore the 
king to liberty. 

■" The ambassadors are also, according to circumstances, mutatis 
mutandis, to lay the above considerations before general Fairfax and 
the council of the army, adding, that their distinguished merit has 
given them great authority in the kingdom of England, and that all 
these things depend principally on them, and will turn upon their in- 
tentions. On which account the States-general recommend this affair 
to their great wisdom, so that they may be to England (whose greatest 
hopes are now placed in them), not only a shield and a sword in time 
of war, but also a help to the king in his unhappy situation, by direct- 
ing public discussions towards a good and moderate end, by which the 
kingdom will profit, and which will bring on themselves an immortal 
glory. By their magnanimity, they will cause most of their fellow- 
citizens to shed tears of joy, who are at this moment on the point of 



480 APPENDIX. 



weeping with sorrow. Of old, it was said that the Syracusans were 
but the body and the limbs, and that Archimedes was the soul which 
gave motion to all ; the same thing may be said at present, with far 
more reason, of the kingdom of England, and of his excellency and the 
council of the army : this body and these limbs will not act, in the 
present affair, under any other direction than that which his excellency 
and the council of the army shall give them according to their wise 
reflections. While thus setting forth their own eminent qualities in 
fresh glory and grandeur, the benefit will be felt by every inhabitant 
of the kingdom. The ambassadors will moreover add, that there was 
a great captain and wise statesman who gloried in having never caused 
any one of his countrymen to shed a tear, regarding as the sweetest 
fruit of his victories that he could every day dare to meet all his fellow- 
citizens, following the proverb : ' That clemency makes beloved and 
reverenced all those who practise it, and that severity, far from re- 
moving obstacles and difficulties, usually augments and multiplies 
them.' 

" Prudent physicians, also, fear to employ too powerful remedies, 
because these often drive the disease and the life from the body at the 
same time, and for the greater safety's sake, they prefer the use of 
gentler means. 

" If his excellency and the council of the army act thus, the hearts 
of the well-disposed subjects of England will unite in reciprocal friend- 
ship, better and more powerful to consolidate a state than the heaviest 
chains of iron. 

" The States-general think that the kingdom of England will be in- 
vincible, if his excellency, as well as the council of the army, will 
proceed on foundations so equitable to the world and so agreeable to 
God, and which are besides so conformable to the character of the Eng- 
lish nation, and to the situation of its affairs. Finally, the States- 
general entreat his excellency and the council of the army to embrace 
and employ the said means, so that the king may be enlarged from his 
prison and restored to liberty." 

III. First Despatch from Messieurs the Ambassadors-Emtraordinary 
in England to the States- General. 

" High and mighty Lords : 
" On arriving here on the 5th* instant, towards evening, we were 
received by the master of the ceremonies of parliament with many ex- 
cuses, and we immediately requested and insisted upon an audience 
for the next day. On the 6th, early in the morning, we requested, 
through our secretaries and the master of the ceremonies, to be pre- 
sented to both houses of parliament. In reply, the speaker of the up- 
per house sent word to us, that the said house had adjourned to Monday, 
and the speaker of the house of commons intimated that, notwithstand- 
ing some particular obstacles, he would present our request, and en- 
deavor to obtain assent to it. Our secretaries having waited for the 
answer, the speaker let us know in the afternoon that the house had not 



New Style. 



APPENDIX, 481 



been able to sit in the morning, because all the judges, who form part 
of it; had had to attend the high court of justice, and that for this 
reason the lower house also had been obliged to adjourn to Monday 
next. Learning afterwards, that on the same day the said court of 
justice had pronounced sentence of death against the king, in his own 
presence, we succeeded, on Sunday the 7th instant (although all occu- 
pations that do not relate to religious worship are set aside on this day), 
after much trouble, in obtaining in the morning, first, a private audi- 
ence of the speaker of the lower house, then, one of that of the upper 
house ; and, at last, in the afternoon (but not without great difficulty), 
we were admitted to the presence of general Fairfax, lieutenant-gene- 
ral Cromwell, and the principal officers of the army, who were at the 
same time assembled at the general's house. We made all possible re- 
presentations to the said speakers, general, and lieutenant-general, as 
well in private as when assembled together ; we supported our solici- 
tations with the most powerful arguments we could devise, to obtain a 
reprieve of the king's execution (which, it was said, was fixed for 
Monday), until we should have been heard by the parliament ; but we 
only received different answers, dictated by the disposition or the 
temper of each of them. 

" On Monday the 8 th, early in the morning, we sent again to the 
speakers of both houses, to urge them to obtain an audience for us ; 
and after our secretaries, together with the master of the ceremonies, 
had been kept waiting at Westminster till the afternoon, we were all 
at once informed, scarcely ten minutes before the time, that the two 
houses would receive us before they went to dinner, and that we were 
to go at tv^^o o'clock to the upper house, and at three to the house of 
commons. We acted according to this intimation, and went to the up- 
per house, where there were very few peers, as well as to the house of 
commons, where sat about eighty members. After having verbally 
stated and delivered in writing the substance of our instructions, tend- 
ing principally to have the king's execution postponed until we should, 
in a second audience, or in conferences, have had opportunities to state 
more powerful grounds to induce them to grant him his life, or at least 
not to proceed precipitately to execute the sentence of death, we were 
answered by the two speakers that our proposal should be taken into 
consideration. 

" The members of the upper house voted, that conferences on this 
subject, between the tw^o houses, should immediately take place ; but 
as the day was already far advanced, and as the members of the house 
of Commons, as soon as our audience was over, rose to' depart, even 
before we had left the anteroom, into which we had been conducted 
on our way out, we with all speed had our proposal translated into 
English, and delivered to the speaker of the lower house, and after- 
wards to the speaker of the upper house. 

" Yet, having seen yesterday, as we passed by Whitehall, that pre- 
parations were making, which were said to be for the execution, and 
having conferred for a long time this morning with the commissioners 
of the crown of Scotland, to save, if possible, the king's life, we still 
continued to request of parliament, through our secretaries, either an 
answer or another audience ; and endeavored, by the intervention of 

41 



482 APPENDIX. 



the Scottish commissioners, to speak once more to the general, and met 
him about noon at his secretary's house, at Whitehall. The general 
was at length touched by our animated and pressing entreaties, and de- 
clared that he would go directly to Westminster, and recommend to 
parliament to grant the answer and the reprieve we requested, and that 
he would take a few officers of note with him to support the application. 

"But we found, in front of the house in which we had just spoken 
with the general, about two hundred horsemen ; and we learned, as 
well on our way as on reaching home, that all the streets, passages, 
and squares of London were occupied by troops, so that no one could 
pass, and that the approaches of the city were covered with cavalry, so 
as to prevent any one froni coming in or going out. We could not, and 
we knew not in consequence, what further to do. Two days before, 
as well previous to as after our audience, we had, by trustworthy 
persons, been assured that no proceeding or intei'cession in the world 
could succeed, and that God alone could prevent the execution resolved 
upon ; and so the Scottish commissioners, with great pains, had also 
told us. And so it proved ; for, the same day, between two and three 
o'clock, the king was taken to a scaffold covered with black, erected 
before Whitehall. His majesty, accompanied by the bishop of London 
who, it is said, had that morning, at six o'clock, administered to him 
the holy sacrament and consolations of i-eligion, after having said a few 
words, gave up the garter, the blue riband and his cloak, took his coat 
off himself, and showed a great deal of firmness in all his conduct. 
The king, having laid himself down, his head was cut oflf, and held up 
to the gaze of the assembled crowd. 

" This is what, to our great regret, we are obliged to announce to 
your high mightinesses ; and we declare that we have employed all 
possible diligence, without intermission and with all our power, to 
acquit ourselves of your high mightinesses' commission, in seeking to 
prevent the execution of this so fatal sentence. Meantime, as in this 
country all kinds of reports are put forth, for and against, according to 
every one's fancy, and as they ai-e often misinterpreted and embellished 
or exaggerated, particularly now all minds are so excited, we pray 
your high mightinesses, in case you should receive reports contrary 
to or more alarming than the present, to place no faith in them ; and 
to believe us, who came here at the peril of our lives, and have neg- 
lected none of the duties with which we were charged. 

" We dare not send your high mightinesses the further particulars 
that we learn in many quarters, confidential or public, on this event, 
as the passage is very difficult, all the sea-ports being closed. We will 
only add that it is said the king, on the scaffold, recommended that 
religion should be strengthened by taking the advice of Roman-catho- 
lic divines, and that the rights of the prince his son should be respect- 
ed ; adding, that he thought himself in conscience innocent of the 
blood which had been shed, except of that of the earl of Strafford. Im- 
mediately after the king's death, it was announced and proclaimed 
throughout the city by sound of trumpet. 

" We beg the Almighty to grant a long prosperity to your high 
mightinesses, and to your high and mighty government. 

Signed, " Alb. Joachim. 

" London February 9th, 1 649." 



APPENDIX. 483 



IV. Second Dispatch. 

" High and Mighty Lords ; 

" By our first dispatch of the 9th instant, we minutely informed your 
high mightinesses of all the proceedings we had taken with the princi- 
pal functionaries and other eminent personages in this country, as well 
as of the solicitations we addressed to them, and the proposals we trans- 
mitted publicly and in writing to the two houses of parliament (of 
which we herein insert a copy, not having had time to append it to our 
preceding despatch, which was sent by an unexpected opportunity), 
proposals which were left unanswered, as was our request to be admit- 
ted to a second audience, and which were followed by the immediate 
execution of the king, and the prohibition to any one whomsoever, 
under pain of high treason, to take upon himself any authority in the 
name of monarchical power, or to acknowledge and favor the govern- 
ment of the prince of Wales, or any other pretender to the royal suc- 
cession. 

" Already, before this event, we apprehended, and our fears have 
since been realized, that it had been resolved am.ong the authorities 
here to abolish entirely the monarchical government, and to establish 
one of a quite different nature ; for it is publicly said here that the de- 
scendants of the late king will be, without any exception, excluded for 
ever from any sovereignty in this country, though it is not ascertained 
what sort of government is to replace that which is abolished. 

" We have also just heard that already commissioners are appointed 
by parliament to go with all speed to Scotland, where they presume 
and announce being able to direct affairs according to the system adopt- 
ed in England. It is also said, publicly as well as in private, that the 
members of the upper house show themselves displeased at the king's 
execution, and do not at all agree with the house of commons on the 
changes to be introduced in the government ; on the other hand, it is 
thought that Scotland wishes to remain faithful to monarchical govern- 
ment, and to its old institutions. It is difficult to foresee what will be 
the issue of all these combinations and changes in the two countries ; 
and though public tranquillity is nowise disturbed in this capital, in 
consequence of the strict watch kept by the numerous military posts, 
we are ignorant what, in this respect, is the situation of the provinces. 

" Yesterday, we received a visit from the lieutenant-general Crom- 
well, who spoke to us with infinite respect of the government of your 
high mightinesses ; among other subjects, he introduced that of reli- 
gion, giving us to understand that, with the concurrence of your high 
mightinesses, it would be as possible as necessary to re-establish it here 
upon a better system, and to give it a better organization. 

" The earl of Denbigh, who came also yesterday to see us, spoke at 
great length on different questions relating to the government, past and 
■ to come ; whence we concluded that there are still many affairs to ar- 
range, and that the measures they purpose to take do not afford any 
probable conjecture as to their issue and success. As the unhappy 
event of the king's execution puts an end to the negotiation with which 
our extraordinary embassy was charged, we will jointly use our en- 
deavors that the affairs of our mission may suffer as little as possible. 



484 APPENDIX. 



and may continue to be treated according to the interests and to the 
entire satisfaction of your high mightinesses. 

" The high court of justice having terminated its functions, other 
extraordinary tribunals have been instituted, to try the peers and 
other illustrious state prisoners, such as the duke of Hamilton, the 
earl of Holland, lord Goring, &c. Those of a lower rank will be tried 
by the ordinary tribunals, and the prisoners of war by a court-martial. 

" Among other matters that are at present treated of in parliament, 
it is proposed that our people should enjoy here all the rights of navi- 
gation, commerce, manufacture, trades, and market, equally and in 
common with the English nation. We were not ignorant of these dis- 
positions, and moreover were given to understand that they would be 
disposed to make more full and minute proposals to us on this subject. 
We think we hereby give your high mightinesses an evident proof that 
people here are occupying themselves with questions quite out of the 
ordinary track of affairs. 

" We implore the Almighty to keep in long prosperity the govern- 
ment of your high mightinesses. 

Signed, " Alb. Joachim, 

" A. Pauw 

" London, February 12th, 1549." 

V. Third Despatch. 

"High and Mighty Lords : 

•' After the bloody catastrophe which put an end to the king's life, 
an event of which our despatches of the 9th and 12th instant informed 
your high mightinesses, we resolved to keep within our lodgings, after 
the example of other ambassadors, and of the Scottish commissioners. 
The French ambassador and the Scottish commissioners, however, 
having paid us a visit before this event, and the Spanish ambassa- 
dor having repeatedly done us the same honor before and after, 
we could do no otherwise than return these acts of kindness ; we ac- 
cordingly acquitted ourselves of this duty on the 13th, and we remark- 
ed that their excellencies were deeply affected by this great event, 
though the French ambassador had assured us beforehand of his per- 
fect knowledge of the events which would take place. 

" The ambassador of Spain, Don Alfonso de Cardenas, told us that 
the day after this fatal event he had received orders from the king his 
master to intervene in the affairs of this country ; but at present lie is 
of opinion, as well as the French ambassador, that by the unexpected 
death of the king of England, their diplomatic functions and character 
having ceased, they cannot act any longer in their high office, nor in- 
terfere in any respect until they have received fresh orders from their 
court. The Scottish commissioners have sent two despatches to their 
constituents, that is, to the Scottish parliament at present assembled ; 
they expect an answer to their first despatch in the course of the week, 
and will not act till they are duly authorized. 

" The general opinion is that the government will undergo an entire 
change ; that the royed family will be set aside, and another form of 
government introduced ; that perhaps they will imitate that of the 



APPENDIX. 485 



commonwealth of Venice, of the United Provinces, or some other re- 
publican government. We are informed that, in fact, nine members 
of the house of peers and eighteen of that of the house of commons are 
to meet in commission to draw up conjointly the basis of a fresh con- 
stitution. The 13th of this month was the day appointed for the meet- 
ing of the king's judges, in a court of justice at Westminster-hall ; but 
we have just been informed that the meeting did not take place, the 
judges having alleged that they were not sufficiently qualified for this, 
their functions having expired at the king's death, and that they can- 
not resolve to accept so suddenly their new nominations made by par- 
liament, nor change the title of their acts of procedure and other ne- 
cessary formalities, such as those adopted by parliament on the 29th of 
January, 164S, and which we transmitted to your high mightinesses by 
our despatch of the 9th instant. We continue in the most complete 
uncertainty as to the issue of the events which, from the diversity of 
opinions and other fortuitous occurrences, may still undergo vicissi- 
tudes that it is impossible to submit to any probable conjecture ; we 
shall therefore merely remark, that hitherto public tranquillity has not 
been in any way disturbed ; and we pray your high mightinesses to 
attach no oftier value to our information than that which maybe merit- 
ed by our efforts to discover truth in this maze of true and false reports 
which we receive on all sides, and which only leave us the satisfaction 
of confidentially informing your high mightinesses of what we have 
been able to collect in our zeal for your service. 

Signed, " Adrien Pauw, 

" Alb. Joachim. 
"London, February 15th, 1549." 

VI. Fourth Dispatch. 

" High and Mighty Lords : 
" The mfoi-mation contained in our last dispatch, of the 15th of this 
month, having appeared sufficiently important to us, we took care to 
forward it to your high mightinesses by a safe and speedy opportunity ; 
yet the wind having since that time been very contrary, we fear it did 
not reach its destination so speedily as we had hoped. Since that we 
have witnessed events of still greater importance. On the 16th of this 
month, the house of commons, notwithstanding the expectation and the 
wish of the commissioners of both houses, sitting in committee, and 
which requested to be consulted on all the measures to be taken, de- 
creed that the house of lords should from that period cease its functions, 
and be no longer consulted or looked upon as a deliberative body, or as 
constituting an authority in anything concerning the affairs of the 
kingdom ; so that, notwithstanding that the lords and princes still re- 
tain their titles and dignities, and are qualified to occupy any office 
whatever, there will in future be only one sole house of commons as 
the English parliament ; and the peers will no longer be admitted in 
it but as deputies elected by the counties. Next day, the 17th, the 
house of commons by a decree abolished for ever the office of king in 
England. We are informed, moreover, that the parliament thus re- 
duced to one house of commons alone, will meet once every two 
41* 



486 APPEHDIX. 



years for a limited time ; and that permanent executive power will be 
vested in a council of thirty or forty members, of whom about twelve 
may be peers. The council thus organized will represent, during the 
recess of parliament, the sovereign power of the kingdom. This last 
measure is not, however, so definitively resolved as the two above-men- 
tioned. The house of commons is becoming by degrees complete by 
the return of several members who resume their seats on signing an 
expurgatory act, by which they declare that they renounce the opi- 
nions which heretofore placed them in opposition to their colleagues. 
It is also said that at an early day new judges for the higher courts will 
be elected, and new justices of peace. 

" The earl of Denbigh, speaker of the house of lords, not having 
been able to send us a message on the 17th, came to pay us a visit on 
the L8th, to inform us in what manner had been carried into effect the 
dissolution of this assembly, and to deliver the last commands he had 
received from their lordships, in transmitting to us their answer to our 
proposals. After having read them to us, he gave us the copy, which 
we enclose in the present dispatch, retaining himself the original ma- 
nuscript as his personal quittance, adding, that it was, at the same time, 
the last deliberative act of the upper house, which had not wished to 
dissolve until it had given this mark of respect to your high mighti- 
nesses. 

" The house of commons also sent to ask us, by its own messenger, 
when it would suit us to present ourselves to tliem to receive their 
answer to our proposals. To which we replied, that as soon as the 
house would acquaint us with the time appointed for this audience, we 
would attend. 

" Since the unhappy event of the king's death, we had not insisted 
upon an answer ; and though we had heard no more about it, we learn 
at this moment that an outline of this answer has been published in the 
Gazette, without any official communication of it having been sent us. 
A report had previously been spread, and even printed, that we had re- 
quested that our proposals should not be made public. Nothing can be 
more false than this assertion ; without having in any way interfered in 
the matter, or having even mentioned a word on the subject, we left it 
entirely to the discretion of the two houses, to each of which our pro- 
posals were separately addressed in writing, with the necessary form. 
We have remarked, besides, that the reply made by us to the speaker 
of the house of commons when our proposals were delivered, has not 
been inserted in the Gazette in its real tenor, and it has been hitherto 
impossible for us to discover whether such publications appear with or 
without tlie sanction of the superior authorities. 

" On the 16th of this month, some troops of infantry and cavalry 
marched hence to Bristol ; and there is a report that in that town, as 
well as at Gloucester, some indignation has be enexpressed against the 
proceedings of parliament. Here, however, and in the neighborhood, 
all is quiet. 

" To-day, being the day appointed for the appearance of the im- 
peached lords, before the newly-created high court at Westminster- 
hall, Goring, Capel, Hamilton, Holland, and sir John Owen, these lords, 
with the exception of the earl of Holland, who is ill, appeared before 



APPENDIX. 487 



that court, and after having heard each in his turn, the charges brought 
against him, and given in answers to them, were sent back to prison to 
await another summons for the continuation of their trial. 

Signed, «« Adrieiv Pauw, 



Alb. Joachim.' 



VII. Fifth Dispatch. 



" High and Mighty Lords : 
^' The commissioners of the kingdom of Scotland, having received 
dispatches from their parliament, sent word of their contents to us last 
evening at a somewhat irregular hour, and forwarded to us the procla- 
mation, the decree, and the letter, copies of which accompany this dis- 
patch. Your high mightinesses will learn by their contents, that the 
prince of Wales has just been proclaimed by the Scottish parliament, 
king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. The commissioners besides 
informed us, that a gentleman had been immediately sent abroad with 
copies of these decrees ; that the proclamation of them had been made 
in every direction, and that they were preparing forthwith to send an 
envoy, furnished with the largest instructions to his majesty. It is ru- 
mored here, that the parliament is much displeased at this measure ; 
and particularly because the Scots did not content themselves with 
proclaiming him king of Scotland only, but had added to his titles 
" king of Great Britain and Ireland." Levies of troops are going on 
here in secret, and are constantly dispatched towards Scotland and other 
places, which makes it to be presumed that in the latter engagements 
many men were killed. The capital yet continues to enjoy perfect 
tranquillity, and exhibits no appearance of sedition ; the complements 
of the men-of-war are being made up one after another, and we should 
not be surprised if in a very short time there were nearly thirty vessels 
perfectly equipped and ready for sea ; this number, it is confidently 
said, will hereafter be increased to seventy, and it is added that three 
commissioners of parliament will take the command or superintendence 
of this fleet ; as to that, there seems no longer any mention made of the 
earl of Warwick as commander. Last Monday, the 22d instant, the 
gentleman-usher came to inform us that on the Wednesday or Thurs- 
day following, we should be requested to go to parliament to receive, 
before the whole house, an answer to our proposals. On Wednesday 
he informed us that the audience would take place on Thursday even- 
ing ; and accordingly on that day we were conducted in state to West- 
minster-hall. Having been immediately introduced into the house of 
commons, we sat down on the chairs placed for us, and the speaker 
having read to us the answer of the house, gave us a copy of it. Where- 
upon, we answered, in a few words, that when we had read it, we 
would ourselves transmit it to our government, whom it was our inten- 
tion, with the least possible delay, to rejoin, and that we availed our- 
selves of the present opportunity to take leave of parliament in our 
quality of ambassadors-extraordinary. The house that day was much 
fuller than at our first audience, on account of the return of several of 
their absent members, and the restoration of many dissentient members 
who had successively come to resume their seats under the expurgatory 
act. The nomination of a greater number of members b^e Vipon ,^».-^ ^f 



488 APPENDIX. 



the first cares of the new house ; after which they proceeded to elect 
the thirty-eight members of whom the state-council of the kingdom is 
to be composed, and whose names and qualities your high mightinesses 
will read in the enclosed Gazette. The judges of the kingdom also re- 
sumed their sittings last week, and held their usual term. 

" The day before our last audience, and consequently after the notifi- 
cation we had received of it, we received the letters of your high 
mightinesses of the 22d instant ; and having already made preparations 
for our departure, we shall effect it as soon as possible, wishing to re- 
turn as soon as we can to your high mightinesses, to communicate the 
answer we have received, and render a detailed account of our mission, 
which has been accompanied and followed by a multitude of incidents 
and circumstances, which in the present precarious state of affairs, we 
do not think proper to trust to paper. Contrary winds and severe frosts 
having impeded the navigation of the Thames, we cannot fix the day 
of our departure ; but we will seize the first opportunity to return, 
either directly or by way of Dover and Calais, notwithstanding the in- 
conveniences which this last passage is said to present. 

" The state prisoners, viz., the duke of Hamilton, lord Goring, lord 
Capel, and sir John Owen, have already appeared several times before 
the high court of justice. The first put in a bill of exceptions, but it 
was rejected, and he was ordered to prepare his defence, and counsel 
were assigned to him ; the three others have confined themselves within 
the terms of their defence, particularly lord Capel, against whom, as to 
the capitulation and the quarter granted, general Fairfax and commis- 
sary-general Iretonwere heard as witnesses, appearing for this specially 
before the court. All these circumstances make one entertain fears as 
to the fate of those noble personages, who are considered to be in im- 
minent-danger. We think it proper to inform your high mightinesses, 
that the present is the sixth dispatch we have sent you, the two pre- 
ceding ones being of the 15th and 19th instant; the delays occasioned 
by the contrary winds and the frost give us reason to fear that all may 
not have reached your high mightinesses. 

Signed, " Adrian Pattw, 

" Alb. Joachim. 

" Limdon, February 26th, 1649." 



489 



INDEX. 



Abbot, Geo., Archbp. of Canter- 
bury, suspended, 43. 

Absolution, its position on the Con- 
tinent at the accession of Charles 
I., 26 ; its position in England at 
and preceding the same period, 
27, 2S, 29 ; its position in Eng- 
land under Straftbrd, 67 ; at- 
tempts made by the king to ex- 
tend it, 71 ; its powerlessness in 
1641, 112. 

Agitators, or delegates, appointed 
by the common soldiers of the 
army to represent their views, 
342 ; draw up " the case of the 
army," 375. 

" Agreement of the people," a plan 
for a republic drawn up by Ire- 
ton, 432. 

Alford, Mr., his speech on the 
amended bill of rights, 50. 

Ambassadors of England insulted 
in foreign courts, 6S. 

Annandale, Earl of, declares for 
the king, 305. 

Antrim, Earl of, arrested by the 
parliamentary forces in Ireland, 
and discovery of his plot against 
the parliament, 242. 

Arbitrary ti-ibunals abolished, 134. 

Argyle, earl of, embraces the cause 
of the covenant, 96 ;. retires to 
Kinneil Castle to avoid being ar- 
rested by the king, 137 ; expla- 
nation of the affair, 13S ; is cre- 
ated duke of Argyle, ib. ; arrives 
in London to co-operate with the 
independents, 2S8 ; character- 
ized, ib. ; concludes a treaty with 
the Scottish royalists, 419. 

Aristocracy, its condition on the 



Continent at the accession of 
Charles I., 26; its condition in 
England at and preceding the 
same period, 27 ; courted by the 
king in his difficulties, 72 ; a 
portion of it sides with the peo- 
ple, 73 ; takes alarm at the pro- 
gress of the church, 79. 
Army, parliamentary, formation of, 
decreed, 184 ; marches from Lon- 
don to attack the king, 187 ; re- 
viewed on Turnham-green, 193; 
another army raised for parlia- 
ment, 217 ; reviewed on Houns- 
low-heath by Essex, 223 ; its 
composition in 1644, 254; capi- 
tulates to that of the king in 
Cornwall, 265 ; characterized, 
314 ; petitions parliament, 339 ; 
several of its officers summoned 
to the bar of the house of com- 
mons, 340 ; demands the restora- 
tion of Cromwell to command, 
341 ; petitions parliament for re- 
dress, ib. ; its increasing power, 
342 ; opens communications with 
the king, ib. ; several regiments 
mutiny, 343 ; under the direction 
of Cromwell, marches towards 
London, 352 ; draws up an hum- 
ble remonstrance to parliament, 
ib. ; demands the expulsion of 
Holies and other members, ib. ; 
its conciliatory treatment of the 
king, 355 ; makes proposals to 
the king, 358 ; marches towards 
London, 360; coolness between 
it and the king, 362 ; reviewed on 
Hounslow Heath, 364; marches 
upon London, ib. ; societies 
formed in, against the king, and 



490 



INDEX. 



Cromwell and other officers, who 
appeared to favor him, 372 ; ap- 
points new agents to support its 
particular views, 373 ; its de- 
mands in 1647, 375 ; meeting of 
a portion of, at Ware, 3S5 ; meet- 
ing of the officers and agitators 
at head-quarters, 388 ; marches 
through London, 395 ; is quar- 
tered in various parts of London, 
ib ; petition from, calling for the 
punishment of the king, 421 ; is 
put in motion against the pres- 
byterians, 427 ; its violent pro- 
ceedings against the presbyterian 
members of parliament, 429. 

Arnell, Richard, shot for mutiny, 
386. 

Arundel, Earl of, released from the 
Tower on demand of the lords, 
41 ; again arrested by the king, 
42. 

Ashburnham, Mr., accompanies 
the king in his flight from Ox- 
ford, 321 ; characterized, 357 ; 
his insolent demeanor towards 
the parliamentary officers, 361 ; 
accompanies the king in his flight 
from Hampton Court, 380 ; his 
preliminary interview with Ham- 
mond, 381 ; is ordered to quit the 
Isle of Wight, 391. 

Astley, Lord, defeated at Stow by 
the parliamentary forces, 319. 

Atherton Moor, battle of, 213. 

Aubigny, Lady, her connexion with 
Waller's plot, 210. 

Axtell, Col., his violent conduct at 
the king's trial, 443 et seq. 

Balfour, Sir W., tampered with 
by the king, 128 ; dismissed from 
the government of the Tower, 
151. 

Bampton Bush, battle of, 292. 

Bancroft, Bp. of Oxford, his death, 
112. 

Bancroft, Dr., maintains the supre- 
macy of the church, 73 ; is 
created Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 74. 



Barbary pirates, make descents on 
the English and Irish coasts, 68. 

Barnstaple surrenders to the royal 
troops, 215. 

Base money, coining of, proposed 
by the king's government, 104. 

Basing-House, taken by the parlia- 
mentary forces, 312. 

Bastwick, John, brought before the 
star-chamber, 87 ; his trial, ib. ; 
his sentence, ib. ; its execution, 
88 ; his condemnation voted ille- 
gal by the house of commons, 
116; his triumphant return to 
London, 117. 

Bath, surrenders to the royal 
troops, 215; taken by the parlia- 
mentary forces, 312. 

Batten, Admiral, cannonades Bur- 
lington, 200. 

Bedford, Earl of, his death, 128. 

Bellasis, Sir H., imprisoned by the 
king forhisliberty of speech, 104. 

Bellievre, M. de, urges the king to 
accept the propositions of par- 
liament, 329. 

Benyon, Geo., addresses a petition 
to parliament on behalf of the 
king, 173. 

Berkley, Sir John, chai-acterized, 
357 ; joins the king by order of 
Henrietta Maria, ib. ; his inter- 
view with Cromwell and other 
leaders of the army, at Reading, 
ib.; his interview with the king, 
358 ; his negotiations with the 
army, ib.; accompanies the king 
in his flight from Hampton Court, 
380 ; his preliminary interview 
with Hammond, 381 ; waits on 
Fairfax and the other generals at- 
Windsor, 388 ; his interview 
with Commandant Watson, 389 ; 
is ordered to quit the Isle of 
Wight, 391. 

Berwick, taken by Langdale, 402. 

Birch, CoL, arrested by Col. Pride, 
429. 

Bishoprics and deaneries, bill for 
a^ogating them introduced into 
the house of commons, 119. 



491 



Bishops, bill for excluding them 
from parliament passed by the 
commons, 119 ; rejected by the 
lords, ib. ; further proceedings 
respecting the measure, 150 ; 
some of them draw up a protest 
declaring null and void all pro- 
ceedings in parliament during 
their absence from it, 151 ; are 
impeached and sent to the 
Tower, 152. 

Biake, Col., his reception of the 
parliamentary commissioners at 
Wallingford, 272. 

Blechington, taken by Cromwell, 
292. 

Bond, Denis, his speech in favor of 
republicanism, 420. 

Bradshaw, John, characterized, 
436 ; chosen president of the 
high court of commission, ib. ; 
his altercations with the king, 
ib., et seq. 

Bray, Captain, deprived of his com- 
mand for mutiny, 386 ; restored 
to his command, 3SS 

Brentford, battle of, 192. 

Brereton, Sir Wm., continued in 
his command by parliament, not- 
withstanding the self-denying 
ordinance, 293. 

Bridgewater surrenders to the royal 
troops, 215 ; taken by the par- 
liamentary forces, 312. 

Bristol surrender? to the royal 
troops, 215 ; surrenders to the 
parliamentary forces, 306. 

Bristol, Earl of, not summoned by 
Charles to his second parlia- 
ment, 38 ; appeals to the peers 
and has his claim admitted, 40 ; is 
impeached by the king, ib. ; im- 
peaches Buckingham, ib. ; is 
arrested by the king, 42. 

Brownists, sect of, their rise, S3 ; 
emigrations, ib. 

Brook, Lord, his speech at Guild- 
hall, 192. 

Buckingham, Villiers, Duke of, his 
visit to Madrid with Prince 
Charles, 28 ; impeached by the 



commons, 39; characterized, ib.; 
his answer to the charges against 
him, 40 ; impeached by Lord 
Bristol, ib. ; fails in his attempt 
upon the Isle of Re, 44 ; diffi- 
culties of his position, 45 ; his 
speech on the occasion of a sub- 
sidy being voted, 47 ; assassinat- 
ed, 53. 

Buckingham, Duke of, takes up 
arms in support of the king, 405. 

Burleigh, Lord, his advice to Queen 
Elizabeth, 45. 

Burley, Capt., hanged at Newport 
for a movement in favor of the 
king, 394. 

Burton, Wm., brought before the 
star-chamber, 87 ; his trial, ib. ; 
his sentence, ib. ; its execution, 
88 ; his condemnation voted ille- 
gal by the house of commons, 
116 ; the public honors paid him 
on his return to London, 117. 

Burlington cannonaded by Admiral 
Batten, 200. 

Byron, Sir Gilbert, raises troops for 
the king, in Nottinghamshire, 
402. 

Byron, Sir John, appointed gover- 
nor of the Tower, 153. 

Cadiz, expedition against, dis- 
patched by the king, 38 ; its 
failure, ib. 

Caernarvon, Lord, his death and 
character, 227. 

Cambridge universitj', sends pai-t 
of its plate to the king, 181. 

Canterbury, royalist disturbances 
at, 397." 

Capel, Lord, appointed to attend 
Prince Charles into the West of 
England, 291 ; raises troops for 
the king in Hertfordshire, 402. 

Carew, Mr., sent to the Tower by 
the king, 105. 

Carew, Sir Alexander, his trial 
and execution, 281. 

Carlisle, taken by the Scots, 303 ; 
taken by the royalist troops, 402. 

"Case of the army," a declaration 



492 



INDEX. 



drawn up by the discontented 
troops, 375. 

Catholics, Roman, join the army of 
Newcastle, 200. 

Catholicism, its progress under 
Laud, 79. 

Censorship of a rigorous character 
established, 374. 

Challoner, Mr,., executed for a plot 
against the parliament, 210. 

Charles I., his accession to the 
throne of England, 25 ; assem- 
bles a parliament, ib. ; his per- 
sonal character, 26 ; the circum- 
stances which placed him in an- 
tagonism with his people, ib. ; 
his visit to Spain previous to his 
accession, 28 ; his reception at 
Madrid, ib. ; his marriage with 
Henrietta Maria, ib. ; influence of 
the union upon his mind, ib. ; his 
position with regard to parlia- 
ment on his accession to the 
throne, 34 ; his resentment of the 
freedom of speech indulged in 
by the house of commons, 36 ; 
demands subsidies, engaging to 
redress real grievances, ib. ; in- 
dignant at the refusal of subsi- 
dies, dissolves parliament, 37 ; 
his position with reference to 
his people at this juncture, ib. ; 
intimates his intention to govern 
by himself, ib. ; orders a loan to 
be raised, ib. ; directs severe 
measures against the Roman 
aitholics, 38 ; but sells them dis- 
pensations and pardons, ib. ; calls 
a second parliament, ib. ; the 
character of his despotism at this 
period, ib. ; takes measures for 
keeping the more popular orators 
out of parliament, ib. ; his speech 
to the commons on the occasion 
of Buckingham's impeachment, 
40 ; forbids the judges to answer 
the questions put by the lords, in 
the Earl of Bristol's case, 41 ; 
sends Sir Dudley Digges and Sir 
John Eliot to the Tower, ib. ; 
finds himself necessitated to re- 



lease them, as well as Lord 
Arundel, ib.; dissolves his second 
parliament, 42 ; and places Bris- 
tol and Arundel under arrest, ib. ; 
nature of the difficulties in which 
he now found himself involved, 
ib. ; orders a fresh loan to be 
raised, ib. ; calls a third parlia- 
ment, 45 ; his address to it, ib. ; 
the infatuation of the principles 
on which he proceeded, 46 ; his 
address to the council on the 
occasion of a subsidy being an- 
nounced, 47 ; takes umbrage at 
the commons insisting in the 
first instance upon a redress of 
grievances, 49 ; assures parlia- 
ment of his determination to 
maintain all the national rights, 
but not to be interfered with in 
his own, ib. ; returns an evasive 
answer to the petition of rights, 
50 ; forbids the house of com- 
mons to meddle in affairs of state, 
51 ; modifies this intimation, 52 ; 
sanctions the bill of rights, 53 ; 
prorogues parliament, 53 ; effect 
which the murder of the duke of 
Buckingham produced upon him, 
54 ; adopts measures of the 
most despotic character, ib. ; his 
position at this juncture, ib. ; his 
attempts to obtain the concession 
of the tonnage and poundage 
dues, 55 ; his differences with 
the commons in consequence, 56 ; 
dissolves his third parliament, 
57 ; his proclamation on the oc- 
casion, ib. ; perilous character of 
the career in which he was now 
embarked, 58 ; the nature of his 
views at this time, ib. ; con- 
cludes peace with France, 60; 
and with Spain, ib. ; effect of his 
particular class of despotism 
upon the nation at large, at this 
period, ib. ; his position with 
reference to his wife's favorites, 
61 ; his subjection to Henrietta 
Maria, ib. ; his domestic charac- 
ter, ib. ; his councillors at this 



INDEX. 



498 



period, 62 ; his attachment to 
them, 65 ; his exalted idea of the 
rights of royalty, 66 ; his mode- 
ration towards the Roman catho- 
lics, 67 ; the inflexibility of his 
pride, 68 ; becomes involved in 
pecuniary difficulties, ib. ; for- 
bids Strafford to call the Irish 
parliament, 64 ; character and 
effects of his tyranny, ib. ; re- 
sorts to all sorts of illegal and 
oppressive methods for raising 
money, 70 ; reintroduces long 
since abandoned monopolies, ib. ; 
extends the royal forests, ib. ; 
attempts to conciliate the aristo- 
cracy, 72 ; imposes heavy fines 
for slights exhibited tow^ards the 
nobility, and shares the produce 
with the offended party, ib. ; re- 
sorts for support to the Anglican 
clergy, 73 ; encourages the most 
arrogant pretensions on the part 
of the bishops, 78 ; interposes to 
prevent the emigration of secta- 
ries, 84 ; succeeds in defeating 
Hampden in the court of law, 
90 ; his endeavors to establish 
episcopacy in Scotland, 91 ; or- 
ders the introduction there of an 
Anglican liturgy, 93 ; is deter- 
minately resisted in the attempt, 
ib. ; sends the marquis of Hamil- 
ton to Edinburgh to carry out his 
purposes, 95 ; prepares for war 
with Scotland, 96 ; despatches 
an army towards Edinburgh, 97 ; 
proceeds himself to York, 98 ; 
concludes a pacification with the 
Scots, 99 ; levies another army 
against Scotland, ib. ; sends for 
Strafford, ib. ; summons a new 
parliament in England, 100 ; lays 
the letter of the Scots to the king 
of France before it, and an- 
nounces his determination of re- 
newing the war, 102 ; demands 
subsidies, ib. ; his warm disputes 
with his new house of commons, 
103; offers, on certain conditions, 
to give up all future demands for 

42 



ship money, ib. ; dissolves the 
parliament, ib. ; after futile re- 
grets for taking this step, returns 
to despotism, 104 ; has resort to 
oppressive and illegal means of 
raising money, and renews his 
persecution of popular members 
of parliament, ib. ; departs with 
Strafford for tlie army assembled 
on the Border, 105 ; assembles at 
York, the great council of the 
peers of the kingdom, 107 ; as- 
sembles his fifth parliament, 109 ; 
nature of his address to it, 110 ; 
summons Strafford to attend him, 
113 ; his address to parliament 
on the occasion of the proposed 
tiiennial bill, 117 ; opens nego- 
tiations with the earl of Bedford 
and his friends, 121 ; forms a 
new privy council, ib. ; has in- 
terviews with some of the mal- 
contents of the army, 123 ; signs 
a petition of a threatening nature 
to parliament prepared by them, 
ib. ; his attempts to save Straf- 
ford, 128 ; he announces that 
he will never consent to the 
earl's death, 129 ; his interview 
with Holies on the subject, 130 ; 
he consents to the bill condemn- 
ing Strafford, 131 ; takes his de- 
parture for Scotland, 136 ; his 
attempts to gain over the army, 
ib. ; his arrival in Edinburgh, 
137 ; his concessions to the Scot- 
tish parliament and church, ib. ; 
his affairs with Hamilton and 
Argyle, ib. ; his real design in 
visiting Scotland, and plans in 
concert with Montrose, 137 ; 
leaves the responsibility of quel- 
ling the Irish rebellion to parlia- 
ment, 141 ; his expectations from 
that rebellion, ib. ; returns to 
London, 145 ; his reception on 
his way and on his arrival, ib. ; 
entertains the corporation of 
London at dinner, ib. ; with- 
draws from parliament the guard 
assigned it by Essex, ib. ; hia 



494 



INDEX. 



efforts to rally a party around 
him, 147; engages Hyde, Cole- 
pepper, and Lord Falkland in his 
immediate service, ib. ; his in- 
dignation and fear at the popular 
excitement which now arose, 

150 ; attempts to intimidate par- 
liament, 151 ; adopts the decla- 
ration of the twelve bishops, nul- 
lifying the proceedings in par- 
liament during their absence, 

151 ; affects to give way to the 
parliament, 153 ; rejects the ap- 
plication of the house of com- 
mons for a guard, ib. ; has Lord 
Kimbolton and five members of 
the commons impeached for high 
treason, ib. ; sends a serjeant-at- 
arms to arrest the latter, 154 ; 
proceeds to the house to take the 
accused into custody himself, 

155 ; his speech on the occasion, 

156 ; his affliction at the failure 
of this attempt, 157 ; demands 
the accused at the hands of the 
city authorities without effect, 
158 ; his position at this junc- 
ture, 159 ; retires to Hampton 
Court, 160; prepares for war, 
162 ; proceeds to Windsor, ib. ; 
his negotiations with the parlia- 
ment for the purpose of gaining 
time, 163 ; authorizes the bill for 
excluding the bishops from par- 
liament, 166 ; proceeds to Dover, 
ib. ; has several interviews there, 
at Canterbury, at Theobalds, and 
at Newmarket, with commission- 
ers from the commons, 166, 168 ; 
details of these conferences, ib. ; 
proceeds to York, 169 ; his ap- 
peals to the people, 173 ; their 
effect, ib. ; he gains ground, 174 ; 
his attempt upon Hull, ib. ; or- 
ders, without effect, the West- 
minster assizes to be held at 
York, 176 ; his unsuccessful at- 
tempt to dismiss the parliamen- 
tary commissioners deputed to 
observe his proceedings, 177 ; 
proceeds to levy a guard, ib. ; is 



defeated in the attempt, 178 ; his 
differences with the royalist refu- 
gees from parliament, 179 ; the 
difficulties in which he now 
found himself involved, ib ; 
commissions the principal royal- 
ists to raise troops in his name, 
ib. ; the indecision of his pro- 
ceedings, ib. ; essays to raise 
money by voluntary contribution, 
but with little effect, 181 ; breaks 
off a commenced negotiation with 
the parliament, 182 ; takes active 
measures for carrying on the im- 
pending war, 185 ; makes a pro- 
gress through Yorkshire and 
other counties, ib. ; erects the 
royal standard at Nottingham, 
186 ; establishes his head-quarters 
at Shrewsbury, 187 ; advances 
towards London, 188 ; is defeated 
by Essex at Edgehill, 190 ; es- 
tablishes his head-quarters at 
Oxford, 191 ; obtains possession 
of Banbury and other places, ib. ; 
receives commissioners from the 
parliament at Colnbrook, 192 ; 
defeats Holies' regiment, 193 ; 
occupies Brentford, ib. ; retreats 
to Reading, and then to Oxfoi-d, 
194; receives a deputation from 
the common council, 195 ; re- 
ceives commissioners from the 
parliament at Oxford, 202 ; his 
rejection of their proposals, 203 ; 
sends a message to Hampden, 
212 ; is rejoined by Henrietta- 
Maria, 215 ; declares the two 
houses at Westminster not to be 
a true parliament, and forbids his 
subjects to obey their orders, 
216 ; publishes a more modified 
proclamation, 217 ; the plan he 
had formed for marching upon 
London, 222 ; sends to Lord 
Newcastle on the subject, 223 ; 
relinquishes the enterprise, 224 ; 
besieges Gloucester, ib. ; his in- 
terview with deputies from that 
city, ib. ; sends a messenger to 
Essex with proposals of peace. 



INDEX. 



495 



225 ; raises the siege, 226 ; en- 
gages Essex at Newbury, ib. ; 
retires to Oxford, 227 ; his recep- 
tion of the lords who had with- 
drawn from parliament, 240 ; 
excites unpopularity among the 
nobility by taking part against 
their claims with Prince Rupert, 
241 ; receives intelligence that 
the Scots are preparing to make 
war upon him, 242 ; sends the 
Duke of Hamilton to Edinburgh 
with large offers, ib. ; his intri- 
gues with the Irish discovered, 
ib. ; progress of his affairs in 
Ireland, 243 ; signs a year's truce 
with the Irish rebels, and recalls 
the English troops sent to repress 
them, 245 ; indignation of all 
classes at his conduct on this 
occasion, ib. ; his interview with 
Hyde respecting the parliament 
at Westminster, 246 ; desires a 
proclamation to be drawn up 
dissolving it, ib. ; abandons the 
project, 247 ; his objection to 
calling a parliament at Oxford, 
ib. ; but assents to the proposi- 
tion, ib. ; his feeling with regard 
to war, 250 ; is induced to write 
to the parliament at Westmin- 
ster, to propose negotiations, ib. ; 
adjourns the assembly at Ox- 
ford, 251 ; his feeling towards it, 
ib ; quits Oxford and makes his 
way unperceived between the 
two camps besieging the city, 
255 ; resumes the offensive, 257 ; 
defeats Waller at Cropredy 
Bridge, ib. ; advances into the 
west to attack Fairfax, ib. ; but 
sends at the same time a letter to 
parliament, offering to treat, ib. ; 
writes to Essex, 263 ; sanctions 
a second letter to Essex from 
Lord Wilmot and others, ib. ; 
compels Essex to quit his army, 
and the army itself to capitulate, 
264; addresses another pacific 
message to the house, 266 ; re- 
ijolves to march upon London, 



267 ; issues a proclamation, call- 
ing upon his subjects to rise in 
his favor, ib. ; is defeated by 
Lord Manchester at Newbury, 

268 ; receives commissioners at 
Oxford from the parliament, 273; 
his first public interview with 
them, ib. ; his private interview 
with Holies and Whitlocke, 274; 
his second public interview with 
the commissioners, 275 ; sends a 
message to parliament, 276 ; 
agrees to a conference at Ux- 
bridge, 277 ; restores the name 
of parliament to the houses at 
Westminster, 2S2 ; gives audi- 
ence to Lord Southampton at 
Oxford, 284 ; sends Prince 
Charles into the west of England 
with the title of generalissimo, 
291 ; his despondency at this pe- 
riod, ib. ; quits Oxford for the 
north of England, 292 ; takes 
Leicester, 294 ; is defeated by 
Fairfax at Naseby, 295 ; his pri- 
vate correspondence read to the 
citizens of London in Guildhall, 
298 ; proceeds to Ragland Castle, 
303 ; his letter to Prince Rupert, 
ib. ; takes up his head-quarters 
at York, 304 ; returns to Oxford, 

305 ; marches against the Scots, 
ib. ; returns to Ragland Castle, 

306 ; his letter to Prince Rupert 
respecting the surrender of 
Bristol, ib. ; deprives the prince 
and Colonel Legge of their com- 
missions, 307 ; is defeated by the 
parliamentarians at Rounton 
Heath, ib. ; proceeds to Newark, 
309 ; his interview with Prince 
Rupert, 310 ; dissensions be- 
tween him and Sir Richard Wil- 
lis and other royalists, ib. ; 
escapes to Oxford, 311 ; despe- 
ration of his affairs, ib. ; makes 
overtures of peace, 312 ; renews 
them, 313 ; his secret negotia- 
tions with the Irish Roman 
catholics discovered, 315 ; their 
nature, 316 ; disavows his agenta 



496 



INDEX. 



in those negotiations, but with- 
out effect, 317; his position at 
this time, ib. ; his endeavors to 
sow dissensions among his oppo- 
nents, 319 ; his correspondence 
with Vane, ib. ; proceeds to the 
Scottish camp, 322 ; his recep- 
tion, ib. ; his secret plans with 
Lord Digby, 326 ; writes to Lord 
Ormond, 327 ; his controversy on 
religion with Henderson, 32S ; 
writes to Lord Glamorgan, to 
raise money for him by pawning 
the kingdom, ib. ; continues his 
negotiations with the Irish Ro- 
man Catholics, ib. ; receives 
commissioners from the parlia- 
ment, ib. ; his interviews with 
de Montreuil and Davenant, 329; 
declines the parliamentary pro- 
positions, 330 ; receives a depu- 
tation from Edinburgh, 333 ; his 
letter to Hamilton respecting 
his position, 334 ; increasing 
sympathy of the people for him, 
336 ; is given up by the Scots 
and conveyed to Holmby Castle, 
337 ; his reception by the people 
on his way, and on his arrival, 
ib. ; his treatment by the parlia- 
mentary commissioners, 346 ; is 
removed by the army to New- 
market, ib. ; details of the affair, 
347 ; receives Fairfax and his 
staff at Childersley, 349 ; his 
treatment by the army, 354 ; his 
interview with his .youngest 
children at Maidenhead, 355 ; 
his friendly intercourse with the 
leaders of the army, ib. ; his first 
interview with Sir John Berkley, 
358 ; differences between him 
and the officers, 362 ; addresses 
proposals to them, ib. ; removes 
to Hampton Court, 368 ; his re- 
newed intercourse with Crom- 
well and other leaders of the ar- 
my, 369 ; rejects proposals made 
by parliament, 372 ; his secret 
correspondence with the royal- 
ists, 374; a letter from him to the 



queen discovered by Cromwell, 
ib. ; rigorous measures adopted 
towards him by the army, 378 ; 
consults William Lilly as to a 
place of retreat, 380 ; escapes 
from Hampton Court to the Isle 
of Wight, ib. ; attempts to renew 
his negotiations with the army, 
388 ; his secret hopes, 389 ; re- 
ceives commissioners from the 
parliaments of Scotland and Eng- 
land, at Carisbrook, 390 ; con- 
cludes a treaty with the former, 
ib. ; rejects the proposition of the 
latter, 391 ; his interview with 
Col. Hammond respecting the 
rigorous treatment applied to 
him, ib.,; manifestations in his 
favor throughout the country, 
397 et seq. ; receives commis- 
sioners from the parliament at 
Newport, 415 ; his double deal- 
ing on the occasion, 417 ; his 
firmness with reference to the 
church of England, 418 ; his 
touching farewell to the parlia- 
mentary commissioners, 422 ; is 
removed to Hurst Castle, 424 ; 
and thence to Windsor, 432 ; his 
conversation on the way with 
Major Harrison, 434 ; dines at 
Lord Newburgh's, ib. ; arrival 
at Windsor, ib. ; his treatment 
there, ib. ; is removed to Lon- 
don, 438 ; appears before the 
high court of commission, 439; 
particulars of the first day's trial, 
lb. ; of the second, 441 ; of the 
third, 442 ; steps taken in his 
behalf, ib. ; his fourth appear- 
ance, before the court, 444 ; is 
condemned to death, 446 ; his de- 
meanor after sentence, 447 ; his 
interview next day with Juxon, 
448 ; and with his two youngest 
children, 449 ; his conduct on 
the day of his execution, 452; 
his speech on the scaffold, 454'; 
his death and funeral, 455. 
Charles, Prince of Wales, appoint- 
ed by his father generalissimo of 



INDEX. 



497 



the west, 291 ; offers to mediate 
between the king and the par- 
liament, 313 ; retires to Scilly, 
318 ; assumes the command of 
the mutinied parliamentary 
navy, 402. 

Chester, siege of, raised by the 
king, 293. 

Cholmondeley, Sir H., negotiates 
witli tlie queen, 201. 

Church of England, its position 
immediately after the Reforma- 
tion, 32 ; circumstances connect- 
ing it with despotism, 33 ; its 
position in the latter part of the 
reign of Elizabeth, and under 
James and Charles, 73 ; its inde- 
pendence asserted by Dr. Ban- 
croft, ib. ; its support of absolu- 
tion, 74 ; its assertion of divine 
right for its bishops, 78 ; its en- 
croachments upon civil affairs, 
79 ; the feeling of the country 
towards it, 82 ; its clergy take an 
oath against alterations in its 
government, 105 ; decline of its 
influence, 134. 

Church property, act passed autho- 
rizing the sale of, 314. 

Church, reformation in, actively 
set on foot bv the presbyterians, 
232. 

Clarke, Mr. Edward, his speech in 
favor of prerogative censured by 
the house of commons, 36. 

" Clubmen," origin of this body, 
301 ; their views and progress, 
ib. ; treated with by Fairfax, 
302 ; broken up by Cromwell, 
312. 

Cobbett, Col., removes the king to 
Hurst Castle, 433. 

Coke, Sir Edward, prevented from 
attending the king's second par- 
liament, 38 ; characterized, 46. 

Colchester invested by Fairfax, 
405 ; surrenders, 418. 

Colepepper, Sir J., named chan- 
cellor of the exchequer, 148 ; 
appointed to attend Prince 
Charles into the west, 291. 

42* 



Commerce, its rise in England, 30 ; 
impeded by France, 44 ; benefit 
it derived from Laud, 64. 

Commissioners from parliament 
wait on the king at Dover, 166 
Canterbury, ib.; Theobalds, 167 
Newmarket, 168; York, 176 
Colnbrook, 192 ; Oxford, 202 
sent to Scotland, 218 ; wait on 
the king at Oxford, 273; their 
reception by the people there, 
ib. ; proceed to Newcastle to re- 
ceive the king from the Scots, 
336 ; wait on the king at New- 
port, 415 ; particulars of the con- 
ference, ib. 

Commissioners from the king levy 
oppressive exactions over the 
country, 71. 

Committee of grievances draw up 
a report, 142. 

Committee of safety appointed, 183 ; 
of the two kingdoms appointed, 
252. 

Common council present a petition 
in favor of war, 219 ; present a 
petition for the more vigorous 
prosecution of the war, 294 ; pre- 
sent a petition against the army, 
399 ; refuse permission to Goring 
to pass through the city with 
royalist succors, 404. 

Commons, house of, composition 
of, in the 14th century, 30 ; 
wealth of, in 1628, 31 ; their 
great advances in freedom under 
James I., 35 ; their attitude in 
the first parliament of Charles 
I., 36 ; vote the customs for only 
one year, 37 ; their attitude on 
being assembled, 1st Charles I., 
39 ; impeach the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, ib. ; vote public rumor 
a sufficient ground on which to 
proceed, 39 ; appoint commis- 
sioners to conduct the impeach- 
ment, 40 ; two of their members 
sent to the Tower by the king, 
ib. ; their projected remonstrance 
burnt by the hangman, 42 ; cha- 
racter and views of the house. 



498 



INDEX. 



(3d of Chas. I.), 46 ; have acorT- 
ference with the lords as to the 
rights of the subject, 48 ; insist 
upon a redress of grievances, 49 ; 
draw up the petition of rights, 
ib. ; their proceedings in the 
matter, 51 ; are forbidden by the 
king to meddle in affairs of state, 
ib. ; present a remonstrance 
against Buckingham and against 
illegal collection of tonnage and 
poundage, 53 ; are prorogued, ib.; 
proceedings on being re-assem- 
bled, 55 ; their resistance to the 
king's levying tonnage and 
poundage, ib. ; their position in 
the estimation of the public, 81 ; 
their composition, 4th parliament 
of Charles I., 102 ; their proceed- 
ings, ib. ; vote against the lords 
interfering in money matters, 
103 ; refuse subsidies, ib. ; their 
attitude on the opening of the 
king's 5th parliament, 109 ; 
practically assume the govern- 
ment, 115 ; raise money in their 
own name, ib. ; vote an indemnity 
to the Scots, 116; negotiate for 
peace with Scotland, ib. ; their 
powerful attitude, ib. ; feeling of 
the majority in the 5th parlia- 
ment of Charles, 118 ; send com- 
missioners into the provinces to 
remove the crucifixes, images, 
&c., from the churches, 120; 
attend in a body the trial of 
Strafford, 124 ; press on the pro- 
ceedings, 125 ; tlteir plan for 
effecting the destruction of the 
earl, 126 ; rumor of the house 
being about to be blown up, 129 ; 
their position after Strafford's ex- 
ecution, 133 ; prorogue them- 
selves, 136 ; send a committee to 
watch the king's movements in 
Scotland, ib. ; alarm of the oppo- 
sition at the king's proceedings 
against the covenanters in Scot- 
land, 138 ; authorize the servants 
of members to come armed to the 
house for their protection, 150; 



apply to the kingfor a guard, 153 ; 
their proceedings on the demand 
being rejected, ib. ; steps taken 
by them on account of the im- 
peachment of the five members, 
154; conference with the lords, 
155 ; their reception of the king 
on his coming to arrest the five 
members, 156 ; their subsequent 
proceedings, 159 ; resolve that 
the kingdom shall be put in a 
state of defence, 162; their pro- 
ceedings on the king's withdraw- 
ing from London, 163 ; send 
commissioners to the king re- 
specting the militia bill, 165 ; 
prohibit freedom of discussion, 
174 ; reject a proposition for dis- 
banding the army, 202 ; send 
commissioners to wait on the 
king at Oxford, ib. ; reject the 
pacific measures proposed by the 
lords, 219 ; make a declaration 
of their attachment to the house 
of lords, 287 ; propose to omit 
from Fairfax's commission the 
instruction " to watch over the 
safety of the king's person," ib. ; 
their violent measures to prevent 
the king from coming to London, 
320; vote £100,000 on account 
of the Scots, 226 ; vote that the 
army be disbanded, 337 ; their 
reception of the delegates from 
the army, 341 ; their attempts to 
conciliate the army, 343, 353 ; 
pass a resolution against any 
member holding a place of profit, 
353 ; vote new propositions to 
the king, 339 ; pass a resolution 
to set the king by, 394 ; pass a 
resolution in favor of constitu- 
tional monarchy and of peace, 
399 ; pass a resolution in favor 
of fresh negotiations with the 
king, 403 ; vote new propositions 
to the king, 406 ; their debate 
respecting the king's concessions 
at Newport, 422 ; vote them to 
be satisfactory, 428 ; certain 
members of, arrested by Colonel 



499 



Pride by order of the army, 429 ; 
their treatment, 430 ; further 
proceedings against presbyterian 
members, ib. ; repeal all the pro- 
ceedings in favor of peace, 431 ; 
resolve that the king shall be 
brought to trial, 435; declare 
him guilty of treason, and insti- 
tute a high court of commission 
to try him, ib. ; resolve to pro- 
ceed with the trial of the king, 
notwithstanding the refusal of 
the lords to concur in it, 436 ; 
direct an inventory to be taken 
of the contents of all the royal 
palaces, 437 ; abolish the office 
of king in England, 45G ; allow 
500/. for the expenses of the 
king's funeral, ib. ; declare trai- 
tors any w"ho declare a successor 
to him, ib. 

Confederation of counties for carry- 
ing on the war, 197. 

Conyers, Sir J., appointed governor 
of the Tower, 165. 

Cook, Colonel Edw., consulted by 
the king at Newport, 424. 

Cook, Mr. John, appointed attor- 
ney-general to conduct the 
king's trial, 437. 

Cooke, Mr. Secretary, gives offence 
to the house of commons, 48 ; his 
speech urging subsidies, ib. 

Cornwall, the men of, their bravery 
and loyalty, 213 ; letter of thanks 
to them from the king, 214 ; 
(note) ; peculiarity in the landed 
property of, ib. 

Cottington, Lord, his subtlety, 72. 

Cotton, Sir Robert, his speech in 
favor of a redress of public griev- 
ances, 36 ; summoned to aid the 
king with his counsels, 45. 

Council, great, of peers, called at 
York, 108. 

Council, privy, of a popular cha- 
racter formed, 121. 

Country gentry are ordered to keep 
on their estates, 72 ; character- 
ized, 148 ; their feelings towards 
the presbyterian party, ib. ; resort 



to London to support the king, 
ib. 

Court, the, its hatred of parliament, 
59 ; its intrigues, 61 ; its animo- 
sity to Strafford and Laud, 65 ; 
its alarm at the proceedings of 
the commons, 112. 

Court, Northern, abolished, 118. 

Covenant, solemn league and, 
drawn up, 94 ; its purport, ib. ; 
its immediate acceptation, ib. ; 
agreed to by the parliament of 
England, 229 ; its reception in 
London, ib. 

Credit, public, its origin, 115. 

Cromwell, Mrs., received with 
great honors by the king at 
Hampton Court, 369. 

Cromwell, John, his efforts in 
favor of the king, 443. 

Cromwell, Oliver, his first public 
appearance in parliament, 55 ; 
prevented from emigrating by an 
order in council, 84 ; his early 
menaces against royalty, 118 ; 
nature of his part in the work of 
opposition in the earlier stage of 
his political career, 174 ; pre- 
vents the transmission of supplies 
to the king from Cambridge, 181 ; 
rise of his reputation, 205 ; his 
opinion of the parliamentary and 
royal cavalry, 206 ; raises troops 
in the eastern counties, 207 ; his 
address to his recruits, ib. : his 
rigid discipline, ib. ; his intima- 
tion to Lord Falkland on occa- 
sion of the grievance remon- 
strance, 143 ; his endeavors to 
gain over Lord Manchester, 261 ; 
his attack on Lord Manchester 
in the house of commons, 270 ; 
rising distrust of him on the part 
of thepresbyterians, ib. ; progress 
of his influence with the army, 
271 ; his contempt for the Scots, 
ib. ; his speech in favor of pro- 
secuting the war, 277 ; his power 
over the troops, 290 ; quells a 
mutiny in his own regiment, 
291 ; is continued in command, 



500 



INDEX. 



notwithstanding the self-denying 
ordinance, 292 ; defeats the roy- 
alists at Islip Bridge and other 
places, ib. ; continued in com- 
mand, 293 ; again continued in 
command, 295 ; disperses the 
clubmen, 312; continued in 
command for four months, 314 ; 
is again continued in command, 
317 ; tampers with Ludlow, 33S ; 
his influence with the army, ib. ; 
encourages discontent in the 
army, 339 ; his tamperings with 
Ludlow, 342 ; meets the advances 
of Whitelocke and other mem- 
bers of the commons, 343 ; soli- 
cited by the parliament to re- 
establish harmony between it 
and the army, ib. ; his solemn 
denial of any concurrence in the 
removal of the king from Holm- 
by, 350 ; allegations against him 
on the part of two officers, 351 ; 
his protestations of fidelity to 
the commons, ib. ; repairs to the 
camp at Triploe Heath, and 
openly places himself at the head 
of the army party, 352 ; his rea- 
sons for keeping fair at first with 
the king, 356 ; his interview with 
Sir John Berkley at Reading, 
357 ; characterized by some of 
the army leaders, 353 ; his ma- 
chinations to create dissensions 
in the parliament, 363 ; source 
of his .influence with the re- 
publicans, 367 ; circumstances 
which involved him in distrust 
with the army republicans, 368 ; 
his assiduous intercourse with 
the king at Hampton Court, 369 ; 
seeks to conciliate Lilburne, 
370 ; nature of his feelings at this 
period, ib. ; offers made him by 
the king, ib. ; sentiments to- 
wards him on the part of the 
army, 372 ; difficulties of his po- 
sition in Oct., 1647, 373 ; disco- 
vers a letter from Charles to the 
queen, explaining his real in- 
tentions, 375 ; denounced by i 



Lilburne, 373 ; project to assas- 
sinate him, ib. ; his satisfaction 
at the king's escaping from 
Hampton Court, 385 ; his ener- 
getic proceedings towards the in- 
surrectionary troops at Ware, 
386 ; his subsequent reception in 
the house of commons, 387 ; his 
speech against the king, 393 ; en- 
deavors to reconcile the con- 
tending parties in parliament, 

396 ; is close pressed by Ludlow, 

397 ; suppresses a royal insur- 
rection in London, 398 ; seeks to 
conciliate the citizens of London, 
400 ; proceeds to head-quarters 
to take decisive measures against 
parliament, ib. ; is defeated in 
his immediate object by Fairfax, 
ib. ; his conversation with Lud- 
low, on his position, ib. ; has an 
interview with some presbyteri- 
an ministers, 481 ; takes Pem- 
broke castle, 409 ; and marches 
against the Scots, ib. ; defeats 
them at Wigan and Warrington, 
411 ; is denounced in a pamph- 
let by Major Huntingdon, 412 ; 
enters Scotland, 419 ; has an in- 
terview with Argyle, ib. ; con- 
cludes a treaty with the Scottish 
royalists, ib. ; is received at Ed- 
inburgh in triumph, ib. ; returns' 
to England, 420 ; resumes his 
seat in the house of commons, 
431 ; his speech on the motion 
for bringing the king to trial, 
435 ; his excitement on the 
king's approaching to take his 
trial, 439 ; resists Colonel 
Downs' interposition in favor of 
Charles, 446 ; his conduct on oc- 
casion of signing the king's sen- 
tence, 450, and on that of signing 
the warrant for his execution, 
452 ; visits the body of the king 
in his coffin, 455. 

Cropredy Bridge, battle of, 257. 
Crown lands, sale of, by Elizabeth, 
31. 



INDEX. 



501 



Dalbier, Colonel, mutiny of his 
regiment, 290. 

Darnel, Sir John, his case, and 
that of his colleagues, 43. 

Davenant, Sir William, his attempt 
to induce the king to accept the 
offer of parliament, 329. 

Delinquents, public, denounced by 
the commons, 112. 

Denbigh, Lord, and other commis- 
sioners from the parliament wait 
on the king at Oxford, 273 ; re- 
signs his commission, 289 ; waits 
on the king, with other parlia- 
mentary commissioners, at Ca- 
risbrook, 391. 

Devizes taken by the parliamenta- 
rians, 312. 

Devon and Cornwall, people of, 
form a treaty of mutual neutral- 
ity, 197. 

Devonshire, Duke of, anecdote of 
his daughter, on her convei'sion 
to Roman-catholicism, 78. 

D'Ewes, Sir Symonds, supports a 
motion for peace, 407. 

Digby, his speech against the bill 
of attainder of Strafford condemn- 
ed by the house of commons, 
133; his share in the impeach- 
ment of lord Kimbolton and the 
five members, 154 ; his enmity 
to Prince Rupert, 310 ; defeated 
by the parliamentarians at Sher- 
borne, 311. 

Digges, Sir Dudley, sent to the 
Tower by the king, 41 ; releas- 
ed, ib. ; his speech on the occa- 
sion of the king's forbidding the 
house to meddle in affairs of 
state, 51. 

" Directions for public worship," 
substituted for the Anglican li- 
turgy, 281. 

Dissent, its progress, 84, 85, 324. 

Divines, assembly of, convoked, 
208. 

Dorchester surrenders to the royal 
troops, 215. 

Douglas, marquis of, declares for 
the king, 305. 



Downs, Col,, his attempt in favor 
of the king, 446. 

Ecclesiastics, bill introduced to 
exclude them from civil func- 
tions, 119 ; different views re- 
specting the measure, 120. 

Edgehill, battle of, 189. 

EiKcov Ba(riXi%/7 published, 443. 

Elizabeth, Princess,;Jier interview 
with her father at Maidenhead, 
355 ; her last interview with her 
father, 449. 

Eliot, Sir John, sent to the Tower 
by the king, 41 ; released, ib. ; 
his speech against Buckingham, 
48 ; his speech on the king's for- 
bidding the commons to meddle 
in the affairs of state, 51 ; pro- 
poses a new remonstrance against 
tonnage and poundage, 56 ; his 
death, 60. 

Elizabeth, Queen, her policy with 
reference to the nobility, 27 ; her 
resistance to the principles of 
civil liberty, 35 ; asserts her su- 
premacy over the church, 73. 

Elsynge, Mr., resigns his office of 
clerk to the house of commons, 
437. 

England, the crisis in which she 
was in 1643, 239. 

Episcopacy, petition from London 
for the abolition of, 119. 

Essex, inhabitants of, present a 
petition in favor of the king, 
401. 

Essex, Earl of, sent with an army 
against the Scottish insurgents, 
98 ; withdrawn from the court 
in disgust, 99 ; is appointed cap- 
tain-general South of Trent, 136; 
grants the house of commons a 
guard, 139 ; appointed general- 
issimo of the parliamentary for- 
ces, 184 ; marches out of London 
at the head of the army, 187 
defeats the royalist army at Edge- 
hill, 1S9 ; besieges Reading, 204: 
his innate antipathy to the war 
205 ; decline of his influence 



502 



INDEX. 



ib. ; circumstances which retain- 
ed him in command, ib. ; diffi- 
culties of his position, 206 ; re- 
jects proposals to open negotia- 
tions with the king, 219 ; re- 
lieves Gloucester, 223 ; defeats 
the king at Newbury, 227 ; en- 
ters London in triumph, 229 ; 
tenders his resignation, 230 ; 
withdraws it, ib. ; receives a 
message from the parliament at 
Oxford, 249 ; returns it, ib. ; re- 
ceives a second letter, and replies 
to it, 250 ; besieges Oxford, 254 ; 
refuses to obey the order of par- 
liament to resign his command in 
the West to Waller, 255 ; his suc- 
cesses in the west, 20 1 ; retreats 
into Cornwall, 262 ; difficulties 
of his position, ib. ; receives a 
pacific letter from the king, ib. ; 
and a letter from some of the 
royalist lords, 263 ; rejects their 
overtures, ib. ; sails from Fowey 
to Plymouth, and thence writes 
to parliament an account of his 
disasters, 265 ; the reply of par- 
liament, ib. ; his resignation, 
288 ; his death, 345. 

Evelyn, Sir John, proclaimed a 
traitor by the king, 191. 

Everard, John, his deposition 
against the army, 399. 

Ewers, Colonel, appointed govern- 
or of the Isle of Wight, 422. 

Fairfax, Sir Thomas, his early 
appearance in the cause of liber- 
ty, 177 ; his spirited conduct at 
Heyworth Moor, 178 ; his suc- 
cesses in the north, 205 ; defeat- 
ed at Atherton Moor, 213 ; ap- 
pointed governor of Hull, 217; 
defeats the royalists at Nantwich 
and Selby, 251 ; appointed gene- 
ralissimo of the parliamentary 
army, 286 ; takes up his head- 
quarters at Windsor, 290 ; form- 
ation of his army, ib ; invests 
Oxford, 293 ; defeats the king at 
Naseby, 295 ; invests Bristol, 



305 ; defeats Lord Hopton at 
Torrington, 318; blockades New- 
bury, 321 ; meets the king at 
Nottingham, 337 ; decline of his 
influence with the army, 344 ; 
calls a general council of offi- 
cers, ib. ; his anger at the remo- 
•val of the king from Holmby, 
349 ; waits on the king at Chil- 
dersley, ib. ; addresses a thre-at- 
ening letter to the city of Lon- 
don, 353 ; appoints commission- 
ers to treat with parliament, 
354 ; interposes to procure the 
king an interview with his chil- 
dren, 355 ; his reception of the 
city authorities, 305 ; appeases 
the mutinous troops at Ware, 
385 ; his reception of Sir John 
Berkley, at Windsor, 388 ; re- 
sists Cromwell's project of 
marching the army on London, 
400 ; beats the royalists at Maid- 
stone, 404 ; obtains possession of 
Colchester, 418 ; reception of 
members of the commons on oc- 
casion of Col. Pride's proceed- 
ings, 430 ; withdraws from the 
high court of commission, 436. 

Fairfax, Lady, her interruption of 
the proceedings on the king's 
trial, 444. 

Falkland, Lord, his early devo- 
tion to literature, 80 ; his inter- 
position on behalf of Strafford, 
113 ; characterized, 147 ; ap- 
pointed secretary of state, 148 ; 
characterized, 227 ; his death, 
228. 

Felton, John, assassinated the Duke 
of Buckingham, 53 ; his execu- 
tion, 54 ; copy of the paper found 
in his hat. Appendix ii. 

Fiennes, Nathaniel, his cowardice 
at Bristol, 215. 

Finch, Lord Keeper, his insulting 
treatment of Prynne, 87 ; im- 
peached, 114 ; is permitted to 
escape, ib. 

Fleet, parliamentary, mutinies, 
402. 



INDEX. 



503 



Forests, royal, unduly extended, 

70. 
Fortescue, Sir Faithful, goes over 

to the royal army at Edgehill, 

190. 
France, ambassador from, refuses 

to interfere in the king's favor, 

451. 
Free inquiry, its progress, 33, 74. 

Games, popular, prohibited, 232. 

Gascoigne, Sir Bernard, condemned 
by Fairfax to be shot, but re- 
prieved, 41S, 419. 

German troops levied by Bucking- 
ham, 52. 

Giles, Dr., sent by the king to 
Hampden, 212. 

Glamorgan, Lord, characterized, 
316 ; confidence reposed in him 
by the king, ib. ; his negotiations 
with the Irish Roman Catholics, 
ib. ; is arrested, 317 ; on his re- 
lease, continues his negotiations, 
32S. 

Gloucester besieged by the king, 
224. 

Goodman, Rev. Mr., a Roman 
Catholic priest, pardoned by the 
house of commons, 116. 

Goodwin, Rev. Mr., offers his ser- 
vices to the king, 453. 

Goring, Lord, discloses the plot of 
the army to Lord Bedford, 123 ; 
declares for the king, 185 ; de- 
feated at Langport, 302 ; heads a 
royalist rising in Kent, 401 ; as- 
sembles a royalist army on Black- 
heath, 404 ; retreats into Essex, 
405. 

Gourney, Lord Mayor, impeached 
and dismissed his office by the 
commons, 180. 

Great seal, transmitted by the lord 
chancellor to the king at York, 
176 : replaced by the commons, 
216 ; a new one made, 456. 

Grenville, Mr., fined for speaking 
ill of Lord Suffolk, 72 (note). 

Grey, of Wark, Lord, refusing to 
act as commissioner from the 



parliament of Scotland, is sent to 
the Tower, 218. 

Grievances, report on, presented 
by the presbyterians, 142; de- 
bate on, 143. 

Grimstone, Mayor, his attack on 
Cromwell in the commons, 351. 

Hacker, Col., signs the king's 
death-warrant, 452. 

Hall, Bishop, his treatise on the 
divine right of bishops, 78. 

Hamilton, Marquis of, opens nego- 
tiations with the political lead- 
ers, 121 ; affair between him and 
the king at Edinburgh, 137 ; is 
created duke, 138 ; sent by the 
king to prevent a union between 
the parliaments of Scotland and 
England, 242 ; released from 
prison, 333 ; regains the king's 
favor, ib. ; his exertions for the 
king, ib. ; leads a royalist army 
against the parliamentary forces, 
408; is defeated, 411; retreats 
into Wales, ib. ; surrenders to 
Lambert, ib. 

Hammond, Col., appointed govern- 
or of the Isle of Wight, 379 ; his 
interview with Berkley and Ash- 
burnham, 381 ; waits on the king 
at Tichfield, 382 ; escorts him to 
Carisbrook Castle, ib. ; reports 
his arrival to parliament, 385 ; 
his angry interview with the 
king, 391 ; deprived of his com- 
mand, 422. 

Hampden, John, prevented from 
emigrating by an order in coun- 
cil, 84 ; characterized, 85 ; re- 
fuses to pay ship-money, ib. ; 
brings the question before the 
judges, ib. ; loses the trial, 90; 
his popularity, 91 ; his views 
with reference to episcopacy, 
121 ; moves that the remon- 
strance on grievances be printed, 
144 ; impeached by the king, 
153 ; wounded in a skirmish, 
211; his death, 212; remarks 
upon, 213. 



504 



INDEX. 



Harrison, Major, escorts the king 
to Windsor, 433s his conversa- 
tion on the way with Charles, 
434. 

Haslerig, Sir A., prevented from 
emigrating by an order of coun- 
cil, 84 ; moves the bill of attain- 
der against Stratford, 126 ; im- 
peached by the king, 153. 

Henderson, Alex., draws up the 
solemn league and covenant, 94 ; 
his controversy with the king, 
328. 

Henrietta-Maria, Queen, her mar- 
riage, 28 ; her feelings towards 
England, 61 ; her ascendency 
over her husband, ib. ; charac- 
terized, ib. ; her favorites, 62 ; 
her animosity to Strafford and 
Laud, 65 ; her conferences with 
the discontented officers, 122 ; 
return from the continent with 
supplies, 199 ; her narrow es- 
cape at Burlington, 200 ; takes 
up her residence at York, ib. ; 
enters into negotiations with 
some parliamentary leaders, 201 ; 
impeached by the commons, 
203; joins the king at Oxford, 
215 ; proceeds to Exeter, 254 ; 
embarks at Falmouth for France, 
261 ; solicits permission to visit 
her husband, 442. 

Henry VIII., his policy with refer- 
ence to the nobility, 27, 31 ; his 
persecuting character, 32. 

Hertford, Marquis of, his disgust 
with the court, 214. 

Herbert, Sir Edward, attorney- 
general, impeaches Lord Kim- 
bolton, Hampden, and others, 
153. 

Herbert, Mr., his conversation with 
the king previous to his removal 
to Windsor, 432 ; instructions 
given him by the king after his 
sentence, 448 ; his last offices 
for the king, 452. 

Heyworth Moor, meeting at, called 
by the king, 177. j 

High court of commission, insti- j 



tuted for the trial of the king, 
435 ; its preliminary meetings, 
436; opens its proceedings, 439 ; 
votes the king's condemnation, 
443. 

High commission, ecclesiastical 
court of, abolished, 118. 

Holborne, Mr., acts as counsel to 
Hampden, in the ship-money 
case, 90 ; opposes the bill of 
attainder against Straffisrd, 128. 

Holland, ambassadors from, inter- 
pose in favor of the king, 430, 
and Appendix. 

Holland, Loi'd, his anxiety respect- 
ing the king's intrigues with the 
army, 136 ; deprived of his office 
at court, 175 ; his attempts to 
regain the king's favor, 240 ; re- 
turns to London, 245 ; rises in 
favor of the king, 405 ; taken 
pi'isoner by the parliament, ib. 

Holies, Denzil, characterized, 46 ; 
his interview with the king re- 
specting Strafford, 130; attempts 
to save the earl, 131 ; impeach- 
ed by the king, 153 ; his trium- 
phant return to the parliament, 
161; his interview with the king 
at Oxford, 274 ; proposes strict 
measures against the discontent- 
ed soldiery, 344. 

Hopton, Lord, characterized, 215 ; 
accepts the commission of com- 
mander of the king's forces in the 
west, 317; difficulties of his po- 
sition, ib. ; defeated by Fairfax 
at Torrington, 318 ; retires to 
the Land's End and thence to 
Scilly, ib. 

Hotham, Sir John, sent to the 
Tower by the king, 104 ; appoint- 
ed governor of Hull, 162; re- 
fuses to deliver it up to the king, 
175 ; arrested by parliament, 
217 ; his trial and execution, 
281. 

Hotham, John, jun., executed, 281. 

Household, royal, expenses of, 
their increase under James L 
and Charles I., 67 [note]. 



INDEX. 



505 



Howard, Lord, arrested by Straf- 
ford, 107. 

Hudson, Dr., accompanies the 
king in his flight from Oxford, 
321. 

Hull, summoned by the king, 186. 

Huncks, Colonel, his refusal to 
write the king's death-warrant, 
452. 

Huntingdon, Major, denounces 
Cromwell, 412. 

flyde, Edward, his dissatisfaction 
at the king's dissolving his 4th 
parliament, 104 ; characterized, 
147 ; enters the king's council, 
148 ; prepares an answer to the 
general remonstrance, 151 ; 
draws up replies to the parlia- 
mentary publications, 172 ; joins 
the king at York, 175 ; opposes 
the king's proposal to annul the 
parliament at Westminster, 246 ; 
appointed to attend prince 
Charles into the West, 291 

Impkessment, house of commons 
pass a resolution against, 146. 

Inchiquin, Lord, goes over to the 
king, 399. 

Independents, sect of, their rise 
and persecution, 83. 

Independents, party of, their rise, 
236 ; their principles, ib. ; their 
triumphant position after the 
battle of Marston Moor, 260; 
their progress, 286 ; their ar- 
rangements for securing the ar- 
my, ib. ; their anxiety to get the 
king from out of the hands of 
the Scots, 324 ; eminent men 
enrolled beneath their banners, 
ib. ; their attempts to excite the 
people against tlae Scots, 325 ; 
their indignation at the Scottish 
demands, 331 ; temporary de- 
cline of their influence, 338 ; 
their effbrts to relieve their po- 
sition, 364 ; gain over some of 
the presbyterian members, ib. ; 
their restoration to power, ib. ; 
difficulties of their position, 376 ; 

43 



their leaders meet and resolve 
upon strong measures against the 
presbyterians, 428. 

Industry, its progress under Chas. 
I., 107, 

Infanta of Spain, mention of her 
projected marriage with Charles 
I., 28. 

Ingoldsby, Col., compelled by 
Cromwell and others to sign the 
king's sentence, 450. 

Innovation, political and religious, 
its marked advance towards the 
end of 1643, 237. 

Ireland, its progress under Straf- 
ford, 63 ; breaking out of the 
Roman Catholic insurrection, 
139 ; its progress, 243. 

Ireland, parliament of, votes subsi- 
dies to the king, 194. 

Irish Roman catholics, treaty be- 
tween them and the king disco- 
vered, 315; conditions of the 
treaty, ib. 

Irish Roman Catholic insurgents, 
their negotiations with the king, 
242 ; make a truce with him, 
245 ; the hostility of the people 
of England towards them, ib. ; 
enlist in the king's army, ib. ; 
women found among them, ib. 

Irish royalists in England, rigors 
exercised towards them by the 
parliament, 314. 

Ireton, H., characterized, 338; 
keeps on terms with the king, 
358 ; his assiduous intercourse 
with the king at Hampton Court, 
369 ; is offered by the king the 
government of Ireland, 370; his 
speech against the king, 393. 

Ireton, Mrs., received with great 
honor by the king at Hampton 
court, 369. 

Islip Bridge, battle of, 292. 

James I., his policy characterized, 
26,27; his resistance to civil 
liberty, 34 ; his policy with re- 
ference to the church, 73. 

Jermyn, Henry, his intrigues 



506 



INDEX. 



with the discontented officers, 
122. 

Jenkins, Mr. Justice, his dealings 
with Lilburne in the Tower, 
371. 

Jewels, crown, sold by the queen, 
179. 

Joyce, cornet, removes the king 
from Holmby, 346 ; vindicates 
himself to Fairfax, 350. 

Judges, their subserviency to the 
court, 41, 43, 71 ; declare Straf- 
ford guilty of high treason, 130. 

Juries, their subserviency under 
Henry VIII. and his immediate 
successors, 32. 

Juxon, Bishop of London, appoint- 
ed high treasurer, 64 ; advises 
the king to save Strafford, 131 ; 
attends the king after his sen- 
tence, 44S ; and previous to his 
execution, 452 et seq. 

Kent, petition from, in favor of 
the king and church, 173; roy- 
alist movements in, 401. 

Kilkenny, insurrectionary council 
of, 244. 

Killigrew, Sir H., his answer to 
the proposal for raising money 
among the members of parlia- 
ment to carry on the war, ] 50. 

Kilsyth, battle of, 305. 

Kingston, attempt upon, by the 
royalists, 162. 

Kimbolton, Lord, impeached, 153. 

Kirton, Mr., takes part in the de- 
bate on the king's forbidding the 
house to meddle in the affairs of 
state, 52. 

Lambert, John, characterized, 
336. 

Langdale, M., surprises Berwick, 
402 ; defeated by Cromwell, 410. 

Langhorn, Major-Gen., raises the 
king's standard in Wales, 398. 

Lansdowne, battle of, 213. 

Laud, appointed bishop of London, 
54 ; characterized, 63 ; his ad- 
ministration, 64 ; his moderation 
towards the catholics, 67 ; is of- 



fered a cardinal's hat, ib. ; his 
efforts in favor of the church, 75 ; 
impeached, 114 ; his interview 
with Strafford on the earl's way to 
the scaffold, 132 ; executed, 281. 
Lauderdale, earl of, his offers to 
the king at Newcastle, 336 ; pro- 
poses a mode of escape to the 
king, 379 ; enters into a treaty 
with the king in the Isle of 
Wight, 390. 

Legge, Col. W., deprived of the 
governorship of Oxford by the 
king, 307 ; accompanies the king 
in his flight from Hampton 
Court, 380. 

Leicester taken by the king, 294. 

Leighton, A., his condemnation 
voted by the commons illegal, 
116; his triumphant return to 
London, 117. 

Levellers, described, 367. 

Leven, Lesley, Earl of, his recep- 
tion of the king at Kelham, 322. 

Liberty, civil, its progress in Eng- 
land in the centuries immediate- 
ly preceding Charles I., 29, 31, 
32 ; circumstances which had 
previously retarded its assertion, 
33 ; its progress in the first half 
of the seventeenth century, 84 ; 
circumstances promoting its pro- 
gress, 81, 85. 

Liberty, religious, its connection 
with civil liberty, 33. 

Lilburne, John, execution of his 
sentence, 88 ; his condemnation 
voted by the commons illegal, 
116 ; his triumphant return to 
London, 117; his indomitable 
character, 324 ; his high opinion 
of Cromwell, 368; his reproaches 
to Cromwell on distrusting his 
intentions, 369 ; is visited by 
Cromwell, 370 ; encourages the 
mutinous troops at Ware, 386. 

Lilburne, Robert, mutinous con- 
duct of his regiment at Ware, 
386. 

Lilly, William, consulted by the 
king, 380, 



507 



Lindsey, Earl of, mortally wound- 
ed, 190. 

Lindsey, General, recalled to de- 
fend Scotland against the royal- 
ists, 305. 

Lisle, Sir George, shot at Colches- 
ter, 419. 

Literature, progress of the taste for 
in England, SO. 

Littleton, Lord-chancellor, sends 
the great seal to the king, and 
joins his majesty at York, 176. 

Liturgy, Anglican, attempt to in- 
troduce it into Scotland, 95 ; 
abolished, 281. 

Livesey, Sir M., defeats the royal- 
ist forces near London, 405. 

Loan on the king's own account 
ordered to be raised, 37 ; its 
failure, 38 ; another ordered, 42 ; 
resisted by the people, 43. 

Lords, house of, refuse to sanction 
a vote of the commons respect- 
ing tlie customs' duties, 37 ; ad- 
mit Lord Bristol's claim to his 
seat, 40 ; address the king not to 
dissolve parliament, 42 ; have a 
conference with the commons on 
the rights of the subject, 48; 
urge the commons to modify 
their views, 49 ; their conduct 
with reference to the petition of 
right, 49 ; advocate the views of 
the king on the opening of the 
fourth parliament, 102 ; reject 
the bill for excluding the bishops 
from parliament, 119; have the 
independent sectaries to their 
bar and reprove them, 120 ; 
send commissioners to Scotland 
to watch the king's movements, 
136 ; contention with the com- 
mons on the subject of the 
bishops, 150 ; menaced in popu- 
lar petitions, 165 ; impeach some 
of their colleagues for absenting 
themselves from the house, 176 ; 
adopt peaceful measures, 216 ; 
several members of, join the king 
at Oxford, 221 ; reject the self- 
denying ordinance, 282 ; com- 



plain to the other house of the 
injurious language used towards 
them, 267 ; pass a vote of thanks 
to the Scots, 330 ; resolve to in- 
vite the king to Oatlands, 346 ; 
vote to set the king by, 394 ; 
vote a conference with the king 
in London, 406 ; refuse their 
concurrence in the ordinance for 
trying the king, 435 ; abolished, 
4.56. 

London, citizens of, riotous pro- 
ceedings of, on occasion of the 
war with Scotland, 107; present a 
petition against episcopacy, 119 ; 
manifestations of, in support of 
parliament, 149 ; their reception 
of the king after the arrest of 
the five members, 157 ; present 
a petition for redress of griev- 
ances, 160; public meeting of, 
after the battle of Reading, 192; 
their energy in defence of par- 
liament, 217 ; royalist negotia- 
tions with, 248 ; their feelings 
towards the parliament, 353 ; 
royalist movement of, 358 ; roy- 
alist declaration of, in favor of 
the king, 363 ; give way to the 
independents, 363 ; their sym- 
pathy with the king on his trial, 
441 et seq. 

London, common council of, send 
a deputation to the king in favor 
of peace, 195. 

London, corporation of, called upon 
by the king to furnish twenty 
vessels for his service, 43 ; their 
reply, ib. ; present a petition for 
the calling of a parliament, 108 ; 
invite the commons to a ban- 
quet, 249. 

London, women of, present a peti- 
tion in favor of peace, which 
gives rise to a riot, 220. 

Love, Rev. Mr., his fanatic oration 
at Uxbridge, 284. 

Lovelace, Earl of, opens a corre- 
spondence with the indepen- 
dents, 240. 

Lowden, Earl of, his conference 



508 



INDEX. 



with Whitelocke and Maynard, 
270 ; his intimation to the king 
respecting the covenant, 330. 

Lucas, Sir Charles, raises troops 
for the king, 402 ; is shot at Col- 
chester, 419. 

Ludlow, Edward, characterized, 
338 ; tampered with by Crom- 
well, ib. ; his conversation with 
Cromwell, as to the position of 
the latter, 400 ; endeavors to put 
the army in motion against the 
parliament, 413. 

Lunsford, Sir T., appointed gov- 
ernor of the Tower, 151 ; dis- 
missed the office, 153 ; makes an 
attempt upon Kingston, 162. 

Macgxtire, Lord, executed, 2S1. 

Mainwaring, Dr., promoted, 54. 

Manchester, Earl of, rise of his re- 
putation, 205 ; appointed com- 
mander of the new parliamentary 
army, 217 ; defeats the king at 
Newbury, 268 ; is attacked by 
Cromwell in parliament, ib. ; re- 
signs his command, 289 ; pro- 
tests against the king's trial, 
436. 

Marston Moor, battle of, 258. 

Martyn, Henry, his cowardice at 
Reading, 191 ; is caned by the 
Earl of Northumberland, 204 ; 
his violent speech against the 
king, 221 ; expelled the house, 
222. 

Massey, Major-Gen., his regiment 
disbanded, 326 ; appointed to 
command the troops destined for 
Ireland, 340. 

Maynard, Mr., his interview with 
Lord Lowden, 270 ; his speech 
in favor of the king's rights, 393. 

Maypoles thrown down throughout 
the kingdom, 232. 

Medici, Mary de, ordered by the 
commons to quit England, 116. 

Meeting-houses, their increase, 
324. 

Militia, London, organized for the 
service of parliament, 174 ; a 



body of, join the parliamentary 
army, 193. 

Militia bill, passed by the com- 
mons, 164, by the lords, 165. 

Milton, John, reference to , 324. 

Ministers, two thousand, ejected 
from their livings by the presby- 
terians, 231. 

Monopolies enforced, 70 ; a list of 
them, ib. (note). 

Monopolists declared by the com- 
mons incapable of holding a 
seat in parliament, 112. 

Montague, Dr., complaints against, 
by the commons, 54 ; appointed 
Bishop of Chichester, ib. ; pro- 
fesses Roman Catholic views, 77. 

Montreuil, M. de, his correspon- 
dence with the Scots in favor of 
the king, 321. 

Montrose, Marquis of, his intrigues 
with the king against the cove- 
nanters, 138 ; assumes the com- 
mand of the Irish royalist auxili- 
aries in Scotland, 266 ; gains the 
battles of Tippermuir and Dee 
Bridge, 267 ; defeats Argyle at 
Inverlocky, 285 ; his letter to the 
king against making peace, ib. ; 
defeats the covenanters at Kil- 
syth, 365 ; his reverses, 308 ; 
characterized, ib. 

Mountstuart, Lord, condemned to 
death by Strafibrd, 71 ; his pro- 
perty confiscated by the earl, 72. 

Naseby, battle of, 295. 

Navy, state of the English, under 
Charles I., 35. 

J\''ew agents appointed by the com- 
mon soldiers, 373. 

Newburgh, Lord, his plan for the 
king's escape, 434. 

Newbury, battle of, 226 ; second 
battle of, 267 ; blockaded by 
Fairfax, 321. 

Newcastle surrendered to the par- 
liamentary forces, 337. 

Newcastle, Earl of, escorts the 
queen to York, 200; refuses to 
march with the king upon Lon- 



INDEX. 



509 



don, 223 ; departs for the conti- 
nent, 260. 
Nonconformists, their persecution 

by Laud, 75 ; their progress, 84, 

55, 111. 
Northern court, put into effect, 70 ; 

its nature described, ib. (note) ; 

abolished, 134. 
Northumberland, Earl of, with other 

commissioners from parliament, 

waits on the king at Oxford, 202 ; 

chastises Henry Martyn, 204. 
Nye, Rev. Mr., offers his services to 

the king, 453. 

Officers, general council of, their 

proceedings at Putney, 377. 
Ormond, Earl of, characterized, 

243 ; his efforts for the king, ib. ; 

arrests Lord Glamorgan, 317 ; 

joins the king at Hampton Court, 

369. 
O'Neil, Sir Phelim, produces an 

alleged commission from the 

king, 141. 
Oxford, blockaded by the parlia- 
mentary troops, 254 ; invested 

by Fairfax, 293. 
Oxford, university of, sends its 

plate to the king, ISl. 

Parliament at Westminster, its 
subserviency to power in eaidy 
times, 31 ; 1st Charles L, con- 
voked, 35 ; dissolved, 37 ; 2d, 
convoked, 3S ; dissolved, 42 ; 3d, 
convoked, 45 ; character of its 
intercourse with the king, 46 ; 
prorogued, 53 ; dissolved, 57 ; 
4th, convoked, 101 ; dissolved 
103; 5th, convoked, 107; cir- 
cumstance connected with the 
day on which it assembled, lOS ; 
dissension in, 119 ; takes an oath 
of union in defence of religious 
and civil liberty, 130 ; declares 
itself a permanent body till dis- 
solved by its own consent, ib. ; 
its false moral position at the 
commencement of the struggle, 
172 ; members of, declared trait- 

43* 



ors by the king, ib. ; its declara- 
tion to the king, after the affair 
at Hull, 175 ; its position after 
the commencement of the strug- 
gle, 179 ; sends proposals to the 
king, at York, 181 ; dispatches 
Essex to attack the king, 187 ; 
its proceedings on learning the 
king's approach to London, 188 ; 
requests a safeguard from the 
king for six negotiators, 191 ; 
sends an embassy to the States 
of Holland to require their neu- 
trality, 199 ; internal dissensions, 
208 ; annulled by the king, 216 ; 
invokes the co-operation of the 
parliament of Scotland against 
the king, ib. ; its position in Oct., 
1643, 235 ; progress of the dis- 
sensions in, 237 ; sends commis- 
sioners to Ireland, who are order- 
ed by Ormond to return home, 
244 ; number of members pre- 
sent at, in Jan., 1644, 249; its 
reply to the king's message, 250 ; 
its energetic proceedings, 252 ; 
its letter to Essex respecting the 
king, 254 ; its conduct towards 
Essex, 262 ; its letter to Essex, 
after the Cornwall disaster, 265 
publishes the king's correspon 
dence taken at Naseby, 299 
resolves against any further ne 
gotiations with the king, 313 
passes an act for the sale of 
church property, 314 ; orders 
that no quarter be given to the 
Irish royalists, ib. ; passes a reso- 
lution that it alone has the right 
to dispose of the king's person, 
332 ; its reception of the intelli- 
gence of the king's removal to 
Holmby, 350 ; assailed by the 
populace of London, 360 ; votes 
return of the king, 361 ; many of 
its members take refuge with the 
army, 362 ; its proceedings after 
this secession, 363 : its proceed- 
ings after the return of the fugi- 
tive members, 366 ; makes fresh 
propositions to the king, 371 ; 



510 



INDEX. 



its attempts against the army 
agitators, 377 ; its consternation 
on hearing of the king's escape 
from Hampton Court, 385 ; sends 
commissioners to treat with the 
king, in the Isle of Wight, 389. 

Parliament at Oxford, assembled, 
247 ; sends a pacific message to 
Essex, 249 ; is adjourned, 251. 

Parties, state of, at the commence- 
ment of the struggle, 143. 

Passive obedience preached up by 
the clergy, 43. 

Pembroke Castle surrendered to 
Cromwell, 409. 

Pembroke, Earl of, and other com- 
missioners from parliament, wait 
on the king at the Scottish head- 
quarters, 328 ; receive the king 
from the Scots, 336. 

Pennington, Alderman, made lord- 
mayor on the dismissal of Alder- 
man Gourney, 180. 

Pensions, state, their increase un- 
der James I., and Charles I. 
68 (note). 

People of the continent, their posi- 
tion at the time of Charles I.'s 
accession, 26. 

People of England, their rejoicings 
at the accession of Charles I., 
25 ; circumstances which placed 
them in antagonism with Charles 
I. from the outset, 26 ; their 
position and views in the 14th, 
16th, and 17th centuries, 29, 
30 ; their rapid progress in 
liberty, 34 ; their feeling towards 
Charles I. after the dissolution 
of his first parliament, 37 ; their 
anger at the failure of the expe- 
dition against Cadiz, and hatred 
of Buckingham, 38 ; their resist- 
ance to a forced loan, 43 ; pro- 
gress of their discontent, ib. ; 
their anger at the failure of the 
expedition against Rochelle, 44 ; 
their feeling on the dissolution 
of Charles's third parliament, 59 ; 
the part they took with Eliza- 
beth against the church, 74 ; 



their feeling towards the church 
and Roman Catholicism, 82 ; 
their reception of the result of 
Hampden's trial, 91 ; their feel- 
ing on the assembling of a new 
parliament, 101 ; their sympathy 
with the Scottish insurgents, 
106 ; their feeling at the death 
of Strafford, 133 ; their fury at 
the outbreak of the Irish insur- 
rection, 141 ; their feeling on the 
affair of the five members, 161 ; 
their various views at the com- 
mencement of the struggle, 170 ; 
a large proportion of, take the 
side of parliament, ISO ; open a 
subscription in its support, ib. ; 
their sympathy with the king, 
337. 

Percy, Lord, has an interview with 
the king, 123. 

Peters, Rev. Hugh, his proceedings 
in the interest of Cromwell, 3S7 ; 
his extraordinary address to Fair- 
fax and the officers, 431. 

Philiphaugh, battle of, 308. 

Philips, Sir R., excluded from par- 
liament by the king, 38. 

Portland, Earl of, protests against 
war, 183. 

Powell, Capt., raises royalist suc- 
cors in Wales, 393. 

Poyer, Capt., raises royalist suc- 
cors in Wales, 398. 

Poyntz, Major-General, defeats the 
royalists atRounton Heath, 307 ; 
sent to watch the movements of 
the Scots, 321. 

Petition of rights, drawn up by the 
commons, 49 ; an amendment on 
the, proposed by the lords, 50 
rejected by the commons, ib. 
bill of, adopted by the lords, ib. 
passed, 53 ; ordered to be pub- 
lished, ib. 

Pettiger, Mr. , fined for speaking ill 
of Lord Kingston, 72 (note). 

Presbyterian party, propose a bill 
for the total destruction of bish- 
oprics and deaneries, 119 ; defer- 
ence paid to their party in Edin- 



INDEX. 



511 



burgh by the king, 137 ; their 
triumphant position in 1643, 231; 
origin of their decline, 232 ; their 
rising distrust of Cromwell, 269 ; 
consult Whitelocke and Maynard 
on the subject, 270 ; reject ac- 
commodation on other terms 

>- than the supremacy of their 
church, 329 ; their difficulties 
respecting the disposal of the 
king, 331 ; their attempts to rally 
against the independents, 412 ; 
their treatment by Colonel Pride, 
429. 

Presbyterian politics, character- 
ized, 231. 

Presbyterian religious system, cha- 
racterized, 231. 

Press, liberty of the, abolished by 
parliament, 237 ; futility of the 
ordinance, ib. ; violent proceed- 
ings of the republicans against, 
395. 

Pride, Colonel, appears at the bar 
of the commons, respecting the 
army petition, 340 ; his treat- 
ment of the presbyterian mem- 
bers, 429. 

Property, its subdivision in the 
centuries immediately preceding 
Charles, 30. 

Protestants in Ireland, their perse- 
cution by the catholics, 139. 

Prynne, William, brought before 
the Star-chamber, S7 ; his trial, 
his sentence, and his execution, 
87, 88 ; his condemnation voted 
illegal, 116 ; his triumphant re- 
turn to London, 117 ; his speech 
on occasion of the king being re- 
moved to Hurst Castle, 427 ; his 
treatment at the hands of Colo- 
nel Pride, 429. 

Publications, periodical, their great 
circulation at the commence- 
ment of the struggle, 171. 

Public opinion, its rising influence, 
170. 

Pudsey, Serjeant-Major, waits on 
the king before Gloucester, 224. 

Puritans, their first assumption of 



a distinctive garb and manner, 

8.5. 
Pym, John, characterized, 46 ; hia 
speech on the amended bill of 
rights, 50; his intimation to 
Strafford on the desertion of the 
latter, 54 ; prevented from emi- 
grating by an order in council, 
84; impeaches Strafford, 113; 
his views with reference to epis- 
copacy, 121 ; collects intelligence 
of the army plots, 123 ; conducts 
the prosecution of Strafford, 124 ; 
his measures to withdraw the 
king's support from the earl, 
129 ; royalist attacks upon him, 
173 ; his position with the inde- 
pendents, 234 ; his death and 
character, 24S ; honors paid to 
his memory by parliament, 249. 

Rainsborough, Capt., sent on an 
expedition against Morocco, 6S ; 
put in command of the fleet, 
388 ; assassinated at Doncaster, 
422. 

Rationalists, described, 367. 

Re, Isle of, failure of the attempt 
upon, 44. 

Reading surrendered to the king, 
191 ; to the parliament, 204. 

Recreation, public days of, insti- 
tuted in lieu of Christmas and 
other holidays, 352. 

Reformadoes, characterized, 143. 

Reform, political, its progress, 118 ; 
its position in 1643, 234 ; re- 
ligious, its position in 1643, ib. 

Reformation, its early character, 
32 ; difference between the re- 
formation intended by Henry 
VIII. and that aimed at by the 
people, ib. ; antagonism of the 
two, ib. 

Remonstrance, grievance, pres;ent- 
ed to the king, 145. 

Republicans, the various classes of, 
described, 366 ; their violent pro- 
ceedings in the commons against 
the royalists, 394 ; against the 
presbyterians, 413, 



512 



INDEX. 



Revenue, public, seized by parlia- 
ment for its own use, 1S4. 

Revolution, tendency to, in Eng- 
land, previous to Charles I., 29 ; 
commencement of the actual 
struggle, 169 ; characterized, 
170 ; progress of, 366. 

Rich, Sir Nathaniel, a speech of 
his quoted, 52. 

Richelieu, Cardinal, his corres- 
pondence with the Scots, 101. 

Rinuccini, the pope's nuncio, ar- 
rives in Ireland, 316. 

Rochelle, expedition to succor, 42 ; 
its failure, 44. 

Rockingham, royal forest of, greatly 
extended by Charles I., 70. 

Roundway Down, battle of, 215. 

Royal standard first raised against 
the parliament at Nottingham, 
186. 

Rudyard, Sir Benjamin, his speech 
on the opening of Charles I.'s 
first parliament, 25 ; his speech 
at the opening of Charles I.'s 
third parliament, 47 ; his speech 
against war, 182 ; speaks in favor 
of peace, 201 ;' withdraws for a 
time from public life, 234 ; his 
speech in vindication of the 
rights of parliament, 413. 

Rupert, Prince, arrives in England 
and takes the command of the 
royal cavalry, 188 ; disgusts the 
public by his severities, 199 ; his 
impracticable character, 241 ; 
defeated by t?ie parliamentary 
forces at Marston Moor, 259 ; 
writes to the king, counselling 
peace, 303 ; surrenders Bristol, 
306 ; letter to him from the king 
on the occasion, ib. ; is deprived 
of his commission, 307 ; his in- 
terview with the king at New- 
ark, 310. 

Russell, Col., sent in seai'ch of the 
king, 323. 

St. John", Mr. appointed attorney- 
general, 122 ; his position with 
the independents at their origin, 



234 ; protests against the king's 
trial, 435. 

Salt and meat, taxes on, abolished, 
352. 

Saltmarsh, Rev. J., his pamphlet 
against negotiating with the 
king, 221 ; vindicates the insub- 
ordinate troops, 387. 

Saville, Lord, his intrigues with 
the Scots, 105. 

Scobell, Henry, appointed clerk to 
the parliament, 437. 

Scotland, church of, attempts made 
to overthrow it, 92 ; distinctive 
character of the reformation in, 
ib. ; independent spirit of its 
clergy, 93 ; general assembly of, 
meets at Glasgow, 96 ; its remon- 
strance with the Scottish parlia- 
ment for favoring the king, 334. 

Scotland, parliament of, its mea- 
sures in behalf of the king, 39S. 

Scots break out into insurrection 
at Edinburgh, 93 ; progress of 
the insurrection, 94 ; the insur- 
gents have all their demands 
complied with, 96 ; prepare for 
war, ib. ; address a pacific decla- 
ration to the people of England, 
98 ; open conferences with the 
king, 99 ; are admitted to a pa- 
cification, ib. ; resume hostili- 
ties, 105 ; beat the English at 
Newburn, ib. 

Scott, Major, arrested at Wai-e for 
mutiny, 386. • 

Scott, Mr. T., opposes further se- 
verities towards the king, 406. 

Scottish army contract alliance 
with the English malcontents, 
103 ; enter England, ib. ; their 
pacific conduct towards the po- 
pulation, 107 ; negotiated with, 
108 ; the favor shown them by 
the commons in 1641, 116; in- 
demnity of £300,000 voted to 
them, ib. ; receive the king at 
Kelham, 322 ; their exorbitant 
demands, 332 ; their resentment 
of their contumelious treatment 
by the English, ib. ; their nego- 



INDEX. 



513 



tiations with the king at the Isle 
of Wight, 390 ; enter England, 
in support of the king, 40S ; 
difficulties of their position, 
ib. ; their infantry capitulates, 
411. 

Scottish commissioners wait on the 
king at Oxford, 203 ; their dis- 
sensions with the English par- 
liament, 314; protest against the 
trial of the king, 443. 

Scudamore, Lord, the English am- 
bassador at Paris, forbidden to 
attend the reformed service 
there, 66. 

Sectarianism, its rise and progress, 
236 

Selden, John, characterized, SO. 

Self-denying ordinance, proposed 
by Zouch Tate, 279 ; its con- 
tents, appendix No. xii. ; passed 
by the commons, 259. 

Seymour, Mr., brings a message 
from the Hague to the king, 449. 

Sherborne taken by the parliament, 
312. 

Ship monev, its first imposition, 
43. 

Sidney, Algernon, refuses to take 
part in the trial of the king, 
437. 

Skippon, Major, characterized, 
161 ; appointed to the command 
of the city militia, ib. ; his 
speech to the London mili- 
tia, 193 ; his address to the 
troops after the departure of 
Essex, 264 ; appointed major- 
general in Fairfax's army, 
290 ; directed to convey the 
money destined for the Scots 
to York, 335 ; appointed to com- 
mand the succors raised for Ire- 
land, 340 ; presents a petition 
from some cavalry regiments, 
341 ; restored to the command 
of the militia, 403. 

Southwark, inhabitants of, bring a 
petition to the house in favor of 
the army, but are not allowed to 
present it, 263 



Stagg, Ann, heads a deputation of 
women with a petition to the 
house, 164. 

Star-chamber abolished, 134. 

Strafford, Wentworth, Earl of, 
characterized, 26 ; his speech on 
the lords' amendment on the 
bill of right, 50 ; made a privy 
councillor, 54; his character, 
62 ; and the character of his ad- 
ministration, 63 ; appointed vice- 
roy of Ireland, ib. ; difficulties 
of his position with the king, 66 ; 
his efforts to counteract the ef- 
fects of the king's vacillation, 
69 ; assembles the Irish parlia- 
ment, ib. ; is forbidden to con- 
voke it again, ib. ; condemns 
Lord Mountstuart to death, 71 ; 
gives 6000Z. to buy of}' the king's 
displeasure, ib. ; sent for by the 
king to act against the Scots, 99 ; 
his difficulties, 100 ; returns to 
Ireland to levy troops, &c., 101 ; 
returns from Ireland, 104 ; raises 
funds, ib. ; his arrogance, 105 ; 
departs with the king to the 
army, ib ; returns to York, on 
the dispersion of the army, 106 ; 
his subsequent proceedings, 107 ; 
has Lords Wharton and lloward 
arrested, ib. ; his message to the 
king, ib. ; attacks the Scots, 108 ; 
is censured for this proceeding, 
ib. ; comes to London to attend 
parliament, 113; is impeached 
by the house of commons, ib. ; 
is committed to the Tower, 114 ; 
his trial begins, 124 ; his deport- 
ment, ib. ; progress of the trial ; 
125 ; is attainted of high treason 
by a bill introduced in the lower 
house, 126 ; his speech in his 
defence, ib. ; the bill of his at- 
tainder passes the house of com- 
mons, 128 ; efforts made by the 
king to save his life, ib. ; the 
bill of his attainder passes the 
house of lords, 130 ; his letter 
to the king, 131; the king con- 
sents to his death, ib : his de- 



514 



INDEX. 



meanor previous to his execu- 
tion, 132 ; his death, 133. 

Strickland, Mr., sent as envoy ex- 
traoi'dinary to the states of Hol- 
land, 199. 

Strode, Mr., his opinion of the roy- 
alist troops, 215. 

Stuarts, family of, its absolute ten- 
dencies, 27. 

Sunderland, Lord, death and cha- 
racter of, 227. 

Surrey, petitioners from, have a 
conflict with the parliamentai-y 
troops, 401. 

Tate, Zouch, proposes the self- 
denying ordinance, 279. 

Taunton surrenders to the royal 
troops, 215. 

Taxes, new, imposed by parlia- 
ment, 253. 

Taylor, Mr., sent to the Tower, by 
the commons, 133. 

Theatres ordered to be closed, 232. 

Tippermuir, battle of, 267. 

Tomlinson, Col., his respectful 
treatment of the king, 453. 

Tompkins, Mr., executed for a 
plot against parliament, 210. 

Tonnage and poundage duties, a 
remonstrance of the commons 
against their irregular collec- 
tion, 53; debate on the subject, 
56 ; the levying of the duties 
declared by the house of com- 
mons illegal, ib. 

Torrington, battle of, 31S. 

Tribunals arbitrary, abolished, I IS. 

Triennial bill proposed, 117. 

Tuam, Archbishop of, killed, 315. 

Tyrone, Earl of, anecdote of, 223. 

UxBRiDGE, negotiations at, 2S4. 

Vane, Sir Han-y, made secretary 
of state, 100 ; negotiates a treaty 
of alliance with the Scots, 229 ; 
his secret correspondence with 
the king, 319 ; protests against 
the king's trial, 435. 

Villiers, Sir F., killed by the par- 
lifimentarian forces, 405. 



Waller, Edmund, his plot against 
the parliament, 209 ; gives evi- 
dence against his accomplices, 
210 ; is condemned, but pardon- 
ed, 211. 

Waller, Sir William, obtains the 
appellation of William the Con- 
queror, 205 ; defeated at Lans- 
down and Roundway Down, 213 ; 
returns to London, 215 ; receives 
the thanks of parliament, 217 ; 
resigns his commission, 230; 
dispute between him and Essex, 
256 ; defeated by the king at 
Cropredy Bridge, 257. 

War breaking out of the, 1S5 ; pro- 
gress of, in the provinces, 196; 
character of the, in 1642, 198. 

Ware, rendezvous of the army at 
3S5. 

AVarwick, Earl of, royalist attacks 
upon him, 173 ; assumes th& 
command of the fleet, 180. 

Warwick, Sir Philip, sent by tht! 
king to Lord Newcastle, 223. 

West, Col., appointed to the cora 
mand of the Tower, 406. 

Weymouth surrenders to the royal 
troops, 215. 

Whalley, Col., acts as a spy upoE. 
the king, 371. 

Whalley, Mrs., received with great 
honor by the king, 369. 

Wharton, Lord, arrested bv ordei 
of Straflbrd, 107. 

Whitelocke, Mr., is consulted by 
the presbyterian leaders, 270 , 
his interview with the king al 
Oxford, 274 ; his speech on the 
self-denying ordinance, 279 ; 
seeks the favor of Cromwell, 343. 

Whorewood, Mrs., consults Lilly 
on the peril of the king, 3S0. 

Williams, Abp., assailed by the 
mob, 149. 

Willis, Sir R., his dispute with the 
king, 310. 

Wilson, Roland, equips a regiment 
in support of parliament, 232. 

Winchester taken by the parlia- 
ment, 312. 



INDEX. 



515 



Windebank, Mr., Secretary, im- 
peached, 114; absconds, ib. 

Worcester, Marquis of, his devo- 
ted loyalty, 303 ; receives the 
king at Ragland Castle, ib. 

Workman, Rev. Mr., his persecu- 
tion and death, 76, 77. 

Wroth, Sir T., his speech against 
the king, 392. 

Whychcott, Governor, refuses per- 



mission to have the Anglican 
service performed over the' body 
of the king, 456. 

York, the king assembles a court 
at, 9S ; great council called at, 
107 ; meeting at, in favor of par- 
liament, 176. 

Yorkshire and Cheshire, treaty of 
mutual neutrality between, 197. 



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BY ALEXANDER REID, A. M., 

Rector of the Circus School, Edinburgh. 

"WITH A CRITICAL PREFACE, 

BY HENRY REED, 

Professor of English Literature in the University of Pennsylvania. 

One Volume 12mo. of near 600 pages, neatly bound in leather. Price $1 

Among the wants of our time was a good Dictionary of our own language, espe 
cially adapted for academies and schools. The books which have long been in use 
were of little value to the junior sf idents, being too concise in the definitions, and 
immethodical in the arrangement. Reid's English Dictionary was compiled expressly 
to develop the precise analogies and various properties of the authorized words in 
general use, by the standard authors and orators who use our vernacular tongue 

Exclusive of the large numbers of proper names which are appended, this Diction- 
ary includes four especial improvements — and when their essential value to the 
student is considered, the sterling character of the work as a hand-book of our lan- 
guage instantly will be perceived. 

The primitive word is distinguished by a larger type ; and where there are any de- 
rivatives from it, they follow in alphabetical order, and the part of speech is append 
ed, thus furnishing a complete classification of all the connected analogous words ol 
the same species. 

With this facility to comprehend accurately the determinate meaning of the English 
word, is conjoined a rich illustration for the linguist. The derivation of all the prim 
Itive words is distinctly given, and the phrases of the languageis whence they are de 
duced, whether composite or simple ; so that the student of foreign languages, both 
ancient and modern, by a reference to any word, can ascertain the source whence it 
has been adopted into our own form of speech. This is a great acquisition to the 
person who is anxious to use words in their utmost clearness of meaning. 

To these advantages is subjoined a Vocabulary of the Roots of English Words, 
which is of peculiar value to the collegian. The fifty pages which it includes, fur- 
nish the linguist with a wide-spread field of research, equally amusing and instruct- 
ive. There is also added an Accented List, to the number of fifteen thousand of 
Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names. 

With such novel attractions, and with such decisive merits, the recommendations 
which are prefixed to the work by Professors Frost, Henry, Parks, and Reed, Messrs. 
Baker and Greene, principals of the two chief grammar schools at Boston, and by Dr. 
Keese, Superintendent of Common Schools for the city and county of New York, are 
jnstly due to the labors of the author. They fully corroborate the opinion expressed 
by several other competent authorities, that " Reid's English Dictionary is peculiarly 
Bdapted for the use of schools and families, and is far superior to any other ezist^g 
■imilar compilation." 



D. Appleton 8^ Co. have just published 

THE STANDARD 
PEONOUNCmG DICTIOMEY 

OF THE 

FRENCH AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES, 

IN TWO PARTS. 

PABT I. FRENCH AND ENGLISH. — PART II. ENGLISH AND FEENCH. 

THE FIRST PART COMPREHENDING 

WORDS IN COMMON USE. TERMS CONNECTED WITH SCIENCE. TERMS BELONGINO 
TO THE FINE ARTS. 4000 HISTORICAL NAMES. 4000 GEOGRAPHICAI, NAMES. 
11,000 TEEMS LATELY PUBLISHED. WITH THE 

PRONUNCIATION OP EVERY WORD 

ACCORDINO TO THE FRENCH ACADEMY AND THE MOST EMINENT LEXICOORAFHEBS 
AND GRAMMARIANS. TOGETHER WITH 

750 CRITICAL REMARKS, 

IN WHICH THE VARIOUS METHODS OF PRONOUNCING EMPLOYED BY DIFFERENT AU- 
THORS ARE INVESTIGATED AND COMPARED WITH EACH OTHER. 

THE SECOND PART CONTAINING 

* COPIOUS VOCABULARY OF ENGLISH WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS, WITH THE PRONUIf- 
CIATION ACCORDING TO WALKER. THE WHOLE PRECEDED BY 

A PRACTICAL AND COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM OF FRENCH PRONUxXCIATION. 

BY GABRIEL SURENNE, F. A. S. E., 

French Teacher in Edinburgh ; Corresponding Member of the French Grammatical Society 

of Paris ; Lecturer on Military History in the Scottish Naval and Military 

Academy ; and author of several "Works on Education. 

One volume 12mo. of 900 pages. 

Extract from the Author's Preface. 

The Phraseology, forming the second essential part of this Dictionary, is based on 
that of the Academy, the sole and legitimate authority in France ; and every effort of 
the Author has been so directed, as to render it both copious and practical. With 
this view, an improved method of elucidating new meanings, by employing paren- 
theses, has been introduced, and it is ho ped that the utility and benefits resulting 
from this improvement, will not fail to be duly appreciated. 

Another novelty to which the Author may lay claim, is the placing of Historical 
end Geographical names below each page ; and by this arrangement, the facility of 
being acquainted with their definition and pronunciation at a single glance, wilj 
be found of no small advantage. 

As to tlie English or second part of this Dictionary, the reader will find it to 
consist of a copious vocabulary of terms, with their pronunciation according to tiie 
system of Wallter. The various meanings of the words are translated into French ; 
and when llie expressions hnppen to be substantives, the French gender is pointed ont 
by means ol proper signs. 

Lastly, that competent judges may be aware of the authorities on which the pro- 
nunciation and critical remarks peivading this Dictionary are founded, the titles and 
dates of the works which have been consulted, with brief reflectionson their pro- 
fessed object, will be found in the Introduction following this Preface. 



EDUCATIONAL WORKS. 

Published by D. Appleton Sf Company. 

THE STANDARD PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY OF THE FRENCH 
AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES. Part L French and English; Part II. 
English and French. By Gabriel Surenne, F. A. S. E. One volume 12mo. 

This new and complete Dictionary embraces many valuable improvements. Its plan is on the 
principle of Reid's new Dictionary of the English Language, which has been so favorably .receiv. 
ed by American Scholars. 

OLLENDORFF'S NEW METHOD OF LEARNING TO READ, WRITE 
AND SPEAK THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE. With additions and cor- 
rections, by Felix Foresti, Professor of the Italian Language in the Univer 
sity of New- York. One vol. i2mo. 
OLLENDORFF'S NEW METHOD OF LEARNING TO READ, WRITE 
AND SPEAK THE GERMAN LANGUAGE. To which is added a 
systematic outline of the different Parts of Speech, their inflection and use, 
with full Paradigms, and a complete table of Irregular Verbs. By G. J. 
Adler, A. B. One neat vol. 12mo. Price $1 50. 

M. Ollendorff's system commends itself as the best, nay the only onK of the kind, to all who de- 
sire a practical knowledge of the language. It is fast superseding all others, both on the Con- 
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A KEY TO THE EXERCISES OF OLLENDORFF'S GERMAN GRAM- 
MAR. One volume 12mo., uniform with t.he Grammar. Price 75 cents. 

A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE,; containing the 
Pronunciation, Etymology, and Explanation of all Words authorized by em- 
inent writers ; to which are added a Vocabulary of the Roots of English 
Words, and an accented list of Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names. 
By Alexander Reid, A. M., Rector of the Circus School, Edinburgh. With 
a Critical Preface by Henry Reed, Professor of English Literature in the 
University of Pennsylvania. One vol. 12mo., of near 600 pages, ^1. 
Tho attention of Professors, Students, Tutors, and Heads of Families is solicited to this volume. 

Notwithstanding its compact size and distinctness of type, it comprises /ortj/ thousand words. la 

addition to the correct orthoepy, this manual of words contains four valuable improvements : 

I. The primitive word is given, and then follow the immediate derivatives in alphabetical or- 
der, with the part of speech appended. 

II. After the primitive word is inserted the original term whence it is formed, with the name 
of the language from which it is derived. 

III. There is subjoined a Vocabulary of the Roots of English words, by which the accurate 
purport of them is instantly discoverable. 

IV. An accented List, to the number of fifteen thousand, of Greek, Latin, and Scripture Pro- 
per Names, is added. 

LECTURES ON MODERN HISTORY. By Thomas Arnold, D. D. With 
an Introduction and Notes by Prof Henry Reed. One vol. 12mo., $1 25. 

The distinguished topics which these admirable Lectures comprise are rich in thought and wis- 
dom, and furnish an exuberant source of study and mental and moral improvement. The notes 
of Prof. Reed are extremely valuable and judicious. 

GENERAL HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE. From the 
Fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution. By M. Guizot, late 
Professor of History, now Prime Minister of France. With occasional Notes 
by C. S. Henry, D. D., Professor of Philosophy and History in the Uniyer 
sity of the city of New- York. One volume 12mo., Price $1. 

" IVI. Guizot, in his instructive Lectures, has given us an epitome of modern history, distin 
^uished by all the merit which, in another department, renders Blackstone a subject of such 
leculiar and unbounded praise — a work closely condensed, including nothing useless, omitting 
lothing essential; written with grace, and conceived and arranged with consummate ability." 
\ MANUAL OF ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY ; comprising, I 
indent History, containing the Political History, Geographical Position, and Social State of ths 
Principal Nations of Antiquity, carefully digested from the Ancient Writers, and illustrated by 
the discoveries of Modern Scholars and Travellers. 

II. Modem History, containing tb-? Rise and Progress of the principal European Nations, their 
Political History, and the Changes in their Social Condition, with a History of the Colonies 
founded by Europeans. By W. Cooke Taylor, LL. D., of Trinity College, Dublin. Revised, 
with additions on American History, by C. S. Henry, D. D., Professor of History in the Univer- 
sity of N. Y. One handsome vol. 8vo. of 800 pages, $2 25. *** For convenience as a class-book, 
the Ancient or Modern portion can be had in separate volumes. 

This Manual of History, is already adopted as a text-book in Harvard, Columbia, Yale, New 
iTark, Pencsvlvania, and Brown Vuv srsitiea, and several leading Academies. 



JD. Appleton ^ Co.'s Educational Publications. 
T. K. ARNOLD'S 

GREEK AND LATIN BOOKS, 

FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. ' 

REVISED AND CAREFULLY CORRECTED BY THE REV. J. A. SPENCER A. M. 
.vf** ^^ '^4"f "-^ Classical Works has attained a circulation almost unparalleled, beint introdureA 
To ZZVf, '*' »""'^ ^fl{' ^''""'^' ""^ '"^^^ Educational Institutions in EngZl Th^^e 

t:iTko':ii%T^:XtV;''' "^ '■'' *"* •"'"^"^'^" '''''''■'' -^"^ ^""^'"^-"- -'" '^« «S! 

NOW READY. 
I. A FIRST AND SECOND 

LATIN EOOK AND PRACTICAL GRAMMAR 

One neat volume, 12mo. Price 75 cts. 
ine chiet object of this work (which is founded on the principles of imitation and frpnunnt 
drce!'°°^'"'°'°'"'"'"P"P""' ^° '^"'''''' from the first day of hrbejnni„/ Sci! 
The First Book can be had separately for Junior Classes in Schools. Price 50 cts 

II. A PHACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO LATIN PROSE 

COMPOSITION. 

ONE VOLUME, 12mO, 
^-.o"?!! '?'''' " ?}^° founded on the principles of imitation and frequent repetition. It is at 
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IN PREPARATION. 

I. A FIRST AND SECOND GREEK BOOK, with Easy Exer- 

cises and Vocabulary. One volume, 12mo. 
n. A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO GREEK PROSE 

COMPOSITION. One volume, 12mo. 

ted it'z::i:7zviiE::^M^^^^^ ^-^ ^-^ ^-'--^ »--'- 

III. CORNELIUS NEPOS, with Critical Questions and Answers 
and an Imitative Exercise on each Chapter. ' 

IV. ECLOG.E OVIDIAN.^, with English Notes, &c. 

ri,,. th;l°i^ " ^'""^ ""^ ^^^- P^',' °^^^^ Lateinsches Elementarbuch of Profs. Jacobs and Da 
ring, which has an immense circulation on the Continent. 

V. HISTORI.E ANTiaU.E EPITOME, from Cornelius Nepos 
Justm, &,c., with English Notes, Rules for Constructing, Ques- 
tions, Geographical Lists, &,c. 

MrnJn'i^'^h^ '"°'' ^^'"?^'« collection of Classical School Boobs ; and its publication may be re- 
f™ H^t?T^^r'^''^K'^''^"S' in respect to the mode of teaching and acquiring W 
guages. Heretofore boys have been condemned to the drudgery of going over Latin and Greil 
?av w" '^"*"'"' '^^ remotest conception of the value of what thfy wire learnig, and even 
day becoming more and more disgusted with the dry and unmeaning fask ; but nowtby Mr A? 
f.bp „ fh"^^^ method-substantially the same with that of Gr-LlNDORFF-the moment h1^ 
Knw.^P R """^y f ^^^"u" °' ^'''^^' '•'^y ''^g'" '° learn sentences, to acquire S to st^ 
nZ i^!,^'"!!''"' and Greeks expressed themselves, how their mode of expression diffe'red from 
ours, and by degrees they lay up a stock of knowledge which is utterly astonishin" to those who 
guiles '""^"*°° """"^ '^'" '"°°*'' '" the old-fashioned, dry, studious way of^learning ian- 
Mr. Arnold, in fact, has had the good sense to adopt the system of Nature. A child learn, 
his own language by imitating- what he hears, and constantly repeatmcr it till it s festened in the 
memory. In the same way Mr. A. puts the pupil immediately t^ worE at Exercises in Latin and 
^urtlnV^hetZeth'er'uTnTd'fh^ principles of the language^words are supplird-JSe mide of 
l^Wl^ K '°Sether is told the pupil— he is shown how the Ancients expressed their ideas • 
f„l i? • '' '^P«":"g these things again and again-itm^m iterumgue-the dS pupirhas them 
wdehbly impressed upon his memory and rooted in his understanding. ^ ^ nasihem 

^n^h rin=I?^„T« V . "°" comes out under the most favorable auspices. The Editor is a tho- 
t^B^^t,Siff .» ^°^°'" ''"? ^"^ ''^.^? " Pjajt'"*' teacher for years in this city : he has devoted 
the utmost care to a complete revision of Mr. Arnold's Works, has corrected several erron, of 
.nadvertence or otherwise has rearranged and improved various maUers in the early volume- 
of he who1«' '^ W^^" f"-'"1"^ """^ diligently to the accurate printing and mXnical ex ecuUfe" 
^ C Jlegea" <«""=•?»»« »»»' confidentfy the speedy adoption of these work, in our Scho«U 



D. Appleion <5* Co.^s Valuable Puhlicatiojis. 

LECTURES ON MODEM HISTORY : 

BY 

THOMAS ARNOLD, D,D. 

With an Introduction and Notes, by Henry Reed, Professor of English Literature in 
the University of Pennsylvania. 
One handsome volume \2mo. $1 25. 
This volume contains the first lectures which were delivered by Dr. Arnold after 
his apnointment as Regius Professor of History in the University of Oxford. The series 
of Lectures must oe considered merely as introductory to the expanded views and re- 
searches which the author would have developed had his life been prolonged. In the 
primary lecture which was delivered when he entered upon his official duty, the lecturer 
presented his definition of liistory with a sununary of the duties appertaining to the pro- 
fessor of it. Appropriate, dignified, and perspicuous, it exhibits both originality and power 
in a high degree, commingled with felicitous illustrations of the characteristics, effects, 
and value of historical literature. Four lectures follow on the study of history, rich in 
tlie prominent topics of inquiry concerning national prosperity — among which, with 
masterly eloquence and delineations he adverts to the political economy, the religious 
controversies, the national wars, and the geographical relations of countries. — ^The sext 
three lectures contain a survey of European liistory, particularly examining the revolu- 
tions in ecclesiastical affairs, and the continuous struggles to cast off the despotic yoke, 
and to gain and estabUsh reUgious and civil freedom. — The eighth lecture displays the 
nature of that historical testimony which claims and merits credence. In this disquisition 
the author exhibits in its truth and forcefulness the law of evidence and the method of ita 
application in investigating historical facts. — The course of lectures is an elegant memo- 
rial of the author whose unquenchable philanthropy and untiring zeal in behalf of the 
best interests of mankind render his decease the subject of regret to the civilized world. 

THE 

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS 

OF 

THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., 

Late Head Master at Rugby School, and Regius Pi'ofessor of History in the University 

of Oxford. 
One handsome 8vo. volume. $2 00. 
The topics of this volume are greatly diversified ; including disquisitions on the 
" Church," on " Church and State, in its existing British combinations — on Scriptu- 
ral and Secular History — and on Education, with various other subjects of Political 
Economy. With few exceptions, the matter is of general application and lasting in 
terest ; and the whole is full of far reaching perspicacity, and a burning philanthropic 
attachment to the accelerating progress of sterling knowledge, genuine freedom, pure 
religion and morality, and the best interests and permanent enjoyment of mankind. The 
volume of Miscellanies is a suitable counterpart to the " Life and Correspondence oj 
Dr. Arnold ; " and scholars who have been so deeply interested in that impressive bio- 
graphy, will be gratified to ascertain the deliberate judgment of the Author, upon the 
numerous important themes which his " Miscellaneous Works " so richly and clearly 
announce. ^ 

; THE 

LIFE AJ\IQ,CWlRESPONDENCE OF THOMAS ARi\10LD,D.D. 

yBY THE REV. A. P. STANLEY, AM. 
2 vols, of English edition in 1 vol. 
Jt is not possible strictly to characterize a volume so peculiarly miscellaneous in its 
contents. Not only is tiie individual fully portrayed ; but his official relations are dis- 
played in their prominency. Hence to Collegiate Professors and other Tutors his life 
is a manual whence they may learn much knowledge respecting tuition, and its associ- 
ated duties. Tlie volume combines a mass of Uterary history and portraits of his con- 
temporaries, with a full development of the great Oxford controversy. It is the best 
picture of England which can be procured — and is an essential work for all scholars 
and professional men who would accurately comprehend the character and actions and 
influence of many persons who now stand prominent in Britain, especially in connec- 
tion with the Church of England and the University of Oxford, and modem literatura. 



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